Skilling and reskilling is the way to go for Kerala's ICT Academy, says CEO

The Information and Communication Technology Academy of Kerala (ICTAK) is shifting gears to align with what it calls the evolving development strategy of the state.

In the last three years, the training academy has been focussing on lending employability skills to students through technical or professional training, said Santhosh Kurup, CEO.

“But in the last one-and-half years, we’ve been trying get even with the state’s development strategy. Skilling and reskilling in new-age technology or domains is the way to go,” he said.

Skills for the tech era

In the report titled “Future of Jobs in India,” EY has categorised job roles as those (i) being phased out completely (ii) undergoing substantial changes and (iii) entirely new jobs. Overall, 15 to 20 per cent of jobs may go away and 50 to 55 per cent of IT/ITeS jobs could undergo change. There is a need for reskilling here, Kurup told BusinessLine.

“A 15 to 20 per cent will constitute new jobs, calling for training afresh. Given this, our focus is not just employability, but re-employment and continued employment,” he said. If we don’t get it right here, it could create big social stress. Therefore, shifting job roles, Industrial Revolution 4.0 challenges, and the need to realign with the state’s vision are driving the ICTAK strategy, he said.

With a eye on enhancing digital skills, ICTAK has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UiPath on robotic process automation. It has also held talks with IBM on IoT and robotics.

This is apart from work with the state government on an ‘accelerated blockchain competency development programme’ (ABCD) that gives students the first level of training in full-stack development.

The second level is taken up at the Indian Institute of IT and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K). In this manner, the ICTAK is dealing with seven or eight emerging skills/verticals.

The state government’s Start-up Mission is setting up Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in these verticals along with partners. It has recently opened a Technology Innovation Centre at Kalamassery in Kochi. A dedicated space for future technologies is being set up here, and two agreements with Unity (augmented reality) and Tejas Networks (optical networking) have been signed.

With these agreements with the Mission, ICTAK plans to train students using a ‘future model’ which is cost-effective. “This would hopefully create an economic cycle, driving job creation, and in turn leading to more economic/industry growth,” Kurup said.

Programmes offered

ICTAK students are drawn basically from three levels, he explained. One, there’s a programme through which it reaches out to engineering colleges.

Two, there’s a huge number that has completed graduation and awaiting jobs. In many cases, they they go out of the state — either Bengaluru or Chennai — to train on some of these skills. “We’re trying to see if the same level of training can be provided at affordable fees and with further incentivisation through scholarships,” he said.

Three, industry professionals for whom ICTAK offers weekend and online programmes. There is already a 12-week programme on data science. “We have a capacity to run 300 student trainings at a time with a duration of one-and-a-half months each. Extrapolating this, we could train approximately 2,000 students in a stream in a year,” he said.

Another model being tried out is tying up with engineering colleges with excess infrastructure capacity to spare. Some of these colleges are offering labs on lease based on a commercial model. “So we are in a position to scale up infrastructure based on demand. We have signed up with some 15 colleges ready to lease labs. Scaling up is therefore not an issue.”

The challenge though is availability of qualified trainers. This is where industry participation helps.

Becoming a ‘skill hub’

But even without a formal arrangement in place, ICTAK is able to get experts for our weekend programmes for reskilling. “We are formally proposing a commercial arrangement to Gtech (Group of Technology Companies in Technopark) if its members can spare some of their employees on a sabbatical for two/three months. If we are able to create a pool of some 50 such people in 10 identified domains, we can do superb job. We’ve not yet reached that stage, but we’re hoping we will, sooner or later, ” Kurup said.

The ICTAK aims to attract aspirants not just from Kerala but also from neighbouring states and to promote a ‘skill hub’ for which it is making this value proposition. “We’re confident that we can bring down expenses for training in, say AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) by a cool 70 per cent,” he said.

But there is a perception problem with programmes run by the government. That is why ICTAK says it would be just facilitators for big names such as IBM, EY, Amazon, Google, Unity, UiPath and others who will run the training programmes.

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