Nasscom Futureskills Launches Free AI Learning Courseware

While the industry migrates to adopting processes wherein employees work from home during these exceptional times, there is a greater need for them to continue their efforts in enhancing their skill sets and remain future-ready. With an aim to enhance AI readiness among all individuals in the country, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) in partnership with MEITY, today launched on-demand courseware on Artificial Intelligence. This would be under the NASSCOM FutureSkills initiative and will allow individuals to upskill themselves over the course of the next few weeks.

NASSCOM FutureSkills has curated deep learning programs for its partner ecosystem that will be available for free on the NASSCOM website for all users. The Foundational Artificial Intelligence course from SkillUp Online is aligned to the industry’s recommended Foundation AI curriculum (retail price Rs 6800) free for everyone till May 15, 2020. The Foundational Big Data Analytics course from Digital Vidya, aligned to the industry’s recommended Foundation BDA curriculum will also be soon made available free of cost (retail price Rs 5000). Besides deep skilling, the website will also include microlearning content on AI as quick knowledge bytes.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative, Shri Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, said, “COVID -19 has thrown unprecedented challenges for the world and industries alike. While we continue to fight these challenges as a nation, it’s important to use this opportunity to upgrade our skills, in order to remain industry-relevant and future-ready. This campaign will urge IT professionals, students and everybody else interested in technology to enhance their understanding of emerging tech. We are starting with artificial intelligence, as this is one skill that every professional will need. We hope to see many users signing up to avail of these courses. All the best for learning and be safe!”

NASSCOM acknowledges the role played by AI and other emerging technologies, as an imperative to build a digitally powered tomorrow. It is essential that the workforce is ready with the required capabilities while dealing with AI to execute functions using the technology a lot more efficiently in the future.

Sharing her thoughts on the launch, Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, said, “The novel coronavirus has thrown up exceptional challenges across the world and industries alike. While we continue to fight these challenges as a nation, amidst lockdown and remote working scenarios, it is extremely important that we continue harnessing our skill sets on emerging technologies to become future-ready.  Through NASSCOM and MeitY’s `Unlock your skills during the lockdown’ campaign, we would encourage all stakeholders to use this opportunity of working from home to upskill themselves in the skills of the future. We are confident that together we will be able to overcome this phase and emerge stronger post the crisis” 

This initiative will allow subscribers to learn, get familiarized with AI-enabled technologies and practice AI tools in order to get a deeper understanding of the technology. It will be enabled through micro-learning content, which will be free of cost to the users. Going forward, in the coming weeks, NASSCOM also plans to provide learning modules on other technologies like Big Data, IoT, Cybersecurity along living webinars for participants to create more interactive learning on these themes. To access the courses, please visit https://fslearning.nasscom.in/