Mission10X, a not for profit trust launched by Wipro Ltd, announced it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nasscom, to facilitate enhancement of employability skills of engineering students in IT and related sectors. The MoU was formally signed at Wipro’s corporate office by Pratik Kumar, Executive Vice President, Human Resources, Wipro Ltd, and Som Mittal, President, Nasscom.
On an average, about 550,000 engineering graduates pass out every year from over 3,000 engineering colleges across the country. While India presently boasts one of the world’s largest and most qualified pools of scientific and engineering manpower, the growing global demand for appropriately skilled, industry-oriented professionals and a gradually widening demand-supply gap are expected to test the limits of India’s manpower development capabilities.
This MoU intends to enhance employability skills through multi-pronged approach. It will introduce various skill development programs periodically like ‘Foundation Skills in IT’ (FSIT) for engineering graduates. Nasscom Assessment of Competence-Technology (NAC-Tech) to be used for assessing employability skills of students, both as diagnostic test and final test.
Engineering faculty training in pedagogy for FSIT will be supported by Mission10X. It will enable faculty empowerment through Mission10X Learning Approach, conduct faculty enablement workshops and engagements, undertake joint research in creation of educational assets and disseminating new learning.
As part of this understanding, Mission10X and Nasscom will support deployment of eLearning content for faculty capability building like ‘Aarambh’ for the young engineering faculty members and work together for promoting ‘Unified Learning Kit’ which has the potential to reduce the gap between academia and industry practices in multiple engineering disciplines.
Announcing the MoU, Pratik Kumar, EV-P (HR), Wipro Ltd said, “We are delighted at the prospect of partnering Nasscom.”
This will significantly help the Mission10X initiative to make a much wider impact in enhancing pedagogy among engineering academia. With its focus on enhancing employability of graduating students, this should help the country compete globally with a more enabled workforce.”
Commenting on the announcement, Som Mittal, President, Nasscom, said, “The industry has been investing heavily in the continued skill development of employees through a host of in-house training programmes and certification courses. To ensure scalability and effectiveness of these initiatives, Nasscom is working closely in collaboration with various government bodies, members of the academia, IT-BPO industry and other bodies and is committed to enhancing employability skills amongst its prospective workforce. This MoU will enable creation of educational excellence and provide an equal opportunity to aspirants from different parts of the country who wish to join the IT industry.”
Mission10X-launched on Teacher’s Day 5 September 2007, has so far empowered more than 13,000 faculty members in the innovative Mission10X Learning approach. As of March 2011, it has reached out to more than 900 engineering colleges from 24 Indian states viz., Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, Sikkim, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Goa.
Nasscom is the premier industry body and the chamber of commerce of the IT-ITES industries in India. Nasscom is a global trade organisation with more than 1200 members, which include both Indian and multinational companies that have a presence in India. Nasscom’s member and associate member companies are broadly in the business of software development, software services, software products, consulting services, BPO services, e-commerce & web services, engineering services offshoring and animation and gaming. Nasscom’s membership base constitutes over 95 per cent of the industry revenues in India and employs over 2.24 million professionals.
