Techies ready to pay a premium to arm themselves for the future

  S Latha, a 23-year-old BTech graduate, took a two-year break after working for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). But now, when she has decided to return, she found that traditional IT jobs were not on offer.

“My friends advised me to do a course in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), analytics or blockchain technology,” she says.

What surprised Latha’s father was the fee for the one-year course in AI/ML. “An IT training institute at Gachibowli said the course would cost ₹4 lakh, which is the amount Ispent for my BTech,” she adds.

With traditional skill-sets making it difficult to land jobs, both fresh graduates and seasoned professionals alike are approaching IT training institutes to acquire additional skills.

But experts have a word of caution. “If the quality is good, one can pay such amounts for those courses. One needs to be very careful while choosing the course,” warns a professor at Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad.

“The demand for programmes in analytics, data science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and cloud computing has been rapidly increasing every year. We see an increase of 70 per cent in the top six cities,” said Mohan Lakhamraju, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Great Learning, a Chennai-based online and hybrid-learning company.

“For some of our weekend classroom-based programmes, we receive applications of up to 20 times more than the available number of seats,” he told BusinessLine.

The fee ranges between ₹1 and 4 lakh for the courses, which are of a duration of 3-12 months.

“We don’t offer superficial courses or tool-based certifications. Most professionals who pursue our programmes consider these as Master’s equivalents because of the coverage, depth and outcomes,” Lakhamraju said.

“Close to 70 per cent of our learners achieve career transitions within six months of completion,” he said.