IBM India, NSDC tie-up for offering free digital skills training

IBM today announced its collaboration with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to offer free digital skills training to learners in India.

As part of its collaboration with NSDC, IBM will curate online courses from its Open P-TECH platform. It will then offer these course to users for free through NSDC’s eSkill India portal.

“Under the partnership, Open P-TECH platform will offer courses to develop soft skills, interpersonal skills, problem-solving — a set of 11 key skills which are generally not available in a college curriculum, but are high in demand and are valued in the job market,” the company said in its official release.

The tech major will catalogue over 30 Open P-TECH courses on eSkill India portal, with over 60 hours of learning, as a knowledge partner to learners aged 18 to 22 years for free.

These include courses on technologies such as Cyber Security, Blockchain, AI and Machine Learning, Cloud, Internet of Things, along with professional skills, like Design Thinking.

The online education platform which is currently available only in English will soon be open in over 10 Indian languages including Hindi, followed by Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Urdu, Bengali.

Students can earn and share industry-supported ‘digital badges’ upon learning these courses and can add them to their resumes.

Dr. Manish Kumar, MD and CEO, National Skill Development Corporation said, "The power of technology should be leveraged for reaching out to the youth with scale and quality. Online training through digital platforms like Open P-TECH and eSkill India need to be accelerated to overcome geographical and socio-economic barriers. Digital learning will enable higher participation of women in the labour workforce as the scope for employability will increase. Overall, digital learning will boost the prospects of employment and livelihood for the youth."

“As the pandemic is driving the digital transition to happen more quickly, there must be new forms of learning if we want to empower young learners with technical and market-related skills. Our collaboration with NSDC is a significant milestone to equip the next generation with digital skills. Open P-TECH will make foundational learning in emerging technology and professional skills for the youth more accessible,” said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India/South Asia.