CII, Nasscom to provide digital skilling to 100,000 non-IT youth in 2 years

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Monday announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) to provide digital skilling to youth in sectors other than information technology.

"The initiative aims to skill, reskill, and upskill 100,000 youth in the coming two years, to be scaled up in the future," the announcement said. The main aim is to equip working professionals from non-IT sectors with specific digital skills and keep them updated with key trends.

CII said that seven target sectors have been identified to begin with. These are BFSI, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, green jobs, hospitality, and life sciences.

Under the initiative, the industry bodies will work on enhancing digital fluency in emerging technologies by providing byte-sized, micro-learning content. They will provide free and paid competency programmes, including foundation and deep skilling courses in emerging technology.

"The agreement aims to build a digital learning culture through mass dissemination of cross-sectoral digital content. This will help companies adopt technologies for driving internal efficiencies and enhancing competitiveness," the statement said.

"The need for tech-specific skills has become critical across all sectors. Our partnership will equip non-IT professionals with the skills they need to succeed in the digital age," said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General at CII.

"CII will leverage its over 10,000 direct corporate members and over 300,000 enterprises from affiliated national and regional sectoral industry associations to facilitate digital reskilling and upskilling," he added.

Debjani Ghosh, President at Nasscom, added, "For India to continue its global competitive advantage, we must ensure our workforce is equipped with future-ready skills for the digital era."

Ghosh added that the partnership would leverage Nasscom's FutureSkills Prime aggregator model platform to create India's Digital Talent Stack that will "propel India into a leadership position in the digital world".