SAP opens digital literacy centres in 12 cities

German software product firm SAP on Tuesday opened 25 national digital literacy mission centres in 12 cities across India in partnership with the IT industry's trade body Nasscom Foundation.

"The centres are meant to educate and empower citizens with IT skills through the government's Digital India programme," the company said in a statement here.

The centres are in dozen cities in the six states of Delhi, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttarakhand.

Delhi, Bhuj (Gujarat), Udhampur (Jammu and Kashmir), Bengaluru, Nagapatnam and Tharangampadi (in Tamil Nadu), Karaikal (Puducherry) and Dehradun and Thatyur (in Uttarakhand) are among the 12 cities.

"The centres will equip men and women of underprivileged communities with computer skills, teach them to send e-mail, use social media and leverage the internet to avail online government services like Aadhaar cards, ration cards and PAN cards," SAP Labs India managing director Dilipkumar Khandelwal said.

SAP will bring its 15 computer training centres under the mission over the next two months to train more citizens.

About 7,000 men and women have been trained in these centres since January.

"Our long-term aim is to train 100,000 citizens in digital literacy over the next three years, as we are committed to Digital India, which is essential to transform the country into a technology-driven entrepreneur superpower," Khandelwal said.

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) had set up 50 centres across the country in partnership with the industry players and plans to increase the number of centres to 125 across the country by March 2016.

"The partnership with SAP epitomises industry's commitment towards Digital India. We encourage corporates to take SAP's example and utilise their CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds to strengthen the digital literacy initiative to bridge the digital divide," Nasscom chairman Ganesh Natarajan said.