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