IT sector to meet academia

West Bengal government will be organising an industry-academia interface, in collaboration with Nasscom and Confederation of Indian Industry, in August.

State IT minister, Manabendra Mukherjee said, the objective behind the initiative was to apprise academia about industry requirements and simultaneously market the state's human resource (HR) pool to industry .

The state IT department has invited central IT minister, Dayanidhi Maran for the event. The workshop would be inaugurated by chief minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharjee.

IT and ITES industry leaders who had confirmed their participation were Nasscom chief Kiran Karnik, Neeraj Bharagava of WNS and P K Choudhury of ICRA.

Mukherjee said that jobs were available in the IT and ITES sectors in the state but, there was a need to develop need-based courses by the institutions.

From the academia side, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and engineering colleges were expected to participate.

At present, 20,000 people were employed in the sector and this would increase over the next two months.