India’s G20 Sherpa, Amitabh Kant, has emphasized that skilling will be a major priority for the government in the next five years, highlighting the urgent need to bridge the gap between industry demands and the available talent pool.
Addressing a gathering of industry leaders and entrepreneurs at India Global Innovation Connect held at Bengaluru on Thursday, Kant stressed the importance of aligning educational curricula with the rapidly evolving job market. “We need a huge ramp-up of skilled engineers in India, particularly in areas where there is a high demand, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and cybersecurity,” he said.
Kant criticized the current state of engineering education, stating, “The curriculum of many of these engineering colleges and our IITs needs to be totally reoriented and restructured to align with the demands of today. This needs to be done quickly.”
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The G20 Sherpa highlighted the example of the startup Scaler, which offers short-term courses in AI, ML, and other high-tech skills, enabling graduates to secure substantial salary increases. “We need many more startups like Scaler who are able to upskill and reskill our workforce,” Kant said.
Kant also emphasized the need for collaboration with countries like Israel, Korea, Japan, and Germany, which are leaders in innovation but lack large markets. “We should be able to access their ideas and work in partnership, opening our markets to their innovations while allowing our entrepreneurs to create products out of their high-tech innovations,” he said.
Kant believes India’s population provides immense opportunities for innovative startups to solve unique challenges. “We have challenges in every sphere – education, health, agriculture. Every challenge is an opportunity for startups, and these startups are resolving problems while increasing their enterprise value,” he stated. He emphasized that Indian startups succeeding in the domestic market can then expand globally. “You can’t have Western models being replicated in India. The moment you succeed here, you can succeed anywhere in the world,” Kant added.
From: financialexpress
Financial News
