IBM with NASSCOM Foundation enables over 2500 students as employment ready

IBM and NASSCOM Foundation have jointly announced the culmination of the first year of its new-collar Employability Skills Program. Under the program, more than 2500 students from 23 colleges across various regions of Karnataka, NCR and Haryana completed IBM certified courses on Data Science and Cloud computing.

Ashok Pamidi, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation, says, “Today, India enjoys a demographic dividend where more than 50% of its population is in the working age group and the youth surge presents an opportunity for our country to enhance its growth as well as source skills to the rest of the world. Most of these youth study in non-technical degree colleges and the IBM new collar program focuses on making these students employable in the tech industry. We are delighted to see this new and unique initiative succeed and we are happy to share that we will be continuing this partnership for the second year as well and make 2500 more students from non-tech institutes employable.”  

IBM has been progressing technical, soft and life-skills development in youth to prepare them for the ‘new collar’ jobs.  This unique CSR intervention by IBM engaged students through an on-campus approach in a 204 hour-long blended training model that uses online and face-to-face training immersions to build skills in new-age technologies like Data Science and Cloud Computing.  Students from 23 Tier-2 and Tier-3 non-technical institutions were trained by training partners TMI and iPrimed. The colleges chosen for the program included Vijaya Evening College, East Point College, Vidya Vahini College, Vivekanand Degree College, Karnataka college Dharwad, Siddaganga College, Siddhaganga Women's College and several colleges in Dharwar, Bhagalkot, Gadag, Koppal, Nargund, and Bangalore, and Tumkur.

Manoj Balachandran, Leader, Corporate Social Responsibility, IBM India says, ‘Today technology forces are creating new ecosystems that are transforming operating models- including learning and skills development.  We are extremely proud to see that these new-age learners, many who are not from urban Bangalore, are adapting to digital platform learning and becoming adaptive leaders. The skills development collaboration with education institutions and our program partners; the response we received from new age employers – with over 750 students receiving new collar employment offers - more than 60%  of these students being girls – indicating that the ecosystem is gearing up for the skills and the jobs of the future.”

Post the training, NASSCOM Foundation, IBM, with its training partners, has been conducting various placement drives and has already placed 800+ students from the program in organizations like HGS, HCL Technologies, Mphasis, among others.