What we did as a NASSCOM Foundation Partner to enthuse students to take up careers in futuristic technologies

Synopsis:

Skills such as Cybersecurity, AI, Big Data are the future of information technology. There is
a huge need for trained resources in these domains for the future growth of our country,
companies and individuals. With this objective, a Fortune 500 technology company in
association with NASSCOM Foundation launched a massive awareness program across
India. Six new futuristic skills were introduced to the students from engineering and non
engineering streams to discover their area of interest and enable them to obtain further
certification from Future Prime Skills program, offered by the Ministry of Electronics &
Information Technology and NASSCOM. The intervention had a mix of learning, events, and
competitions from which the best of the ideas are being nurtured to see potential for scale
up into products and services.

The Situation:

There is a significant drop in the quality of exposure of students who graduate out of Tier 2
and Tier 3 campuses, especially from small towns when compared to Tier 1 campuses. Our
client wanted to expose students from such campuses to cutting edge technologies and
enthuse them about considering a career in these domains. They wanted to also tap into
the student’s enthusiasm and innovative capabilities to solve problems using technology
in areas that are aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that India is a
signatory to.
We were appointed as the implementation partner to drive this initiative among engineering
and non-engineering students across eight states in India.

The Solution:

A total of 34 colleges, which are B and C accredited, were selected across India to enroll
7,500 students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
The program was conducted in a webinar format with industry experts sharing their
knowledge in the areas of Cybersecurity, AI, ML, Big Data, UI UX, and Cloud Computing.
Post this, students were tasked to select one or more of the technology areas and complete
certification in the Future Prime Skills program.
To keep them excited about using their knowledge and skills in the real world, an innovative
event, Ideathon was launched. Students built solutions for public use using technology,
which were evaluated by a team of experts in this area.

The Impact:

In all, 7,531 students got certified in atleast one of the skill areas. 8 of the ideas that came
up in Ideathon are being explored for commercial launch, supported by leading industrial
groups and investors.
Seeing the success of this initiative, student enthusiasm and the lack of modern IT
infrastructure in some of the campuses, the client invested in setting up Digital Labs in 9
of the participating ‘women only’ engineering colleges. These labs are expected to help not
just these women students scale up on IT; they are also expected to act as a hub for faculty
development on emerging technologies for non-engineering colleges in the catchment area.