NASSCOM Partners with EdCast to Launch FutureSkills Platform to Upskill 2M IT Workers
The National Association of Software and Services Companies, known as NASSCOM, has announced an exciting initiative called FutureSkills to re-skill and upskill the global IT workforce, targeting millions of workers in India and around the world. The initiative is backed by member firms, including Boston Consulting Group, TCS, Infosys, Accenture, Genpact, Google, Quatrro, NIIT, Wipro, Microsoft ITC Infotech among others, and is powered by EdCast’s Knowledge Cloud platform.
NASSCOM, a not-for-profit industry association established in 1988, is the apex body for the IT industry in India, an industry that continues to make a great contributions to India’s GDP, exports, employment, infrastructure and global visibility. NASSCOM’s more than 2,200 members constitute 90% of the Indian IT industry’s revenue and have enabled the association to spearhead initiatives at local, national and global levels, including FutureSkills.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the platform via video conference during the inaugural session of the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT)-2018.
The industry body also signed an MOU with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to provide financial support and strengthen the reskilling initiatives. Minister for IT and Law, Ravi Shankar Prasad, declined to specify the quantum of financial support but stressed that the project was important for the country.
“Even if a technology destroys ten jobs, it will create 100 jobs. This reskilling platform will help manage that transition,” Minister Prasad said at a press conference. He highlighted the need to manage such skill transitions in a manner that causes the least disruption.
As newer technologies begin to account for as much as a quarter of Indian IT’s revenue, companies have been focused on attempting to retrain employees whose skills might otherwise become obsolete.
EdCast, known for its award-winning Knowledge Cloud for unified discovery, knowledge management and personalized learning experience, was selected as the platform to power the FutureSkills initiative. Its advanced AI-driven infrastructure provides personalized, automatically-delivered content and insights, relevant for users accessible on any device. EdCast’s solution will reach the growing market need for technology-focused upskilling. EdCast was also recently selected to be the knowledge and learning platform powering another upskilling initiative launched with the World Economic Forum in Davos announced last month.
