Industry leaders call for re-skilling existing workforce amid growth in digital adoption

Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad (right) with Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani (centre), Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy (left) at the 24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (ACM Mobicom) 2018, in New Delhi, on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI)

With the growth in adoption of digital technologies in the country, industry leaders have called for an increased focus on re-skilling the existing workforce in the new areas. On Tuesday, while speaking at the 24th MobiCom conference here, Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said that India needs to prepare itself for a period of information and digital abundance, adapt itself to the pace of innovation and learn to collaborate on scale. At the same event, Infosys co-founder N R Narayan Murthy said enterprises should focus on training the youth on new-age technologies like machine learning, internet of things (IoT) and automation, which if used “intelligently” and in an “assistive manner”, can facilitate growth for businesses.

“We have to groom our children to be digitally-savvy right from school. Schools should train students in ‘the four C-s’ – critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. These are the skills required to build the foundation for a sustained leadership in the digital age for India,” Ambani said, adding that governments, businesses and civil society organisations should put together an ecosystem for massive upskilling of the workforce.

Murthy echoed Ambani’s thoughts. “The biggest challenge we have is to train our youth in being prepared for IoT, machine learning, deep learning, automation etc…youngsters will have to be trained if we want to create a larger and larger number of jobs,” the IT industry stalwart said. Citing the example of Infosys, he said the company’s Mysore training centre has a capacity to train 14,000 people a day. “…companies like Infosys will continue to do their job. The question is we want every company to focus on providing such a training…” Murthy said. —With PTI

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