VELLORE: The VIT University here has entered into a strategic partnership with the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) by becoming a member. The formalities in this regard were completed on Tuesday by the vice-president of NASSCOM Dr Sandhya Chintala and VIT chancellor G Viswanathan.
Sandhya who, is also heading the sector skills council of NASSCOM said, the focus was to develop quality talent pool, to meet the requirements of the industry and for the first time in India, NASSCOM had launched the partnership programme with academic institutions such as VIT.
She said, one of the key imperatives for the industry was to continuously seek and develop the ‘right’ talent to drive their growth. Quoting a report by the National Skills Mission, she said, 500 million professionals need to be skilled by 2022, to make them employable.
The good news is that India’s current employable pool is bigger than China, Philippines and Brazil. As the Southern region accounts for 57 per cent of the total talent demand, we have started with VIT now, she added.
VIT, NASSCOM and industry partners would jointly offer certificate courses, to cater to the needs of the IT sector to begin with, noted VIT vice- president Sekar Viswanathan. He said, the curriculum and courseware would be developed shortly and the course would be offered from this year for VIT students (mostly non-engineering students) initially. The focus was on integration of various technology skills, he said. The course would be mostly of 120 to 150 hours and of two months duration.
Sandhya said, “India should become the destination for all jobs across the globe.” The certificate we are planning would be recognized by the UGC and AICTE and government of India would be signing up with various agencies, to recognize this certificates for global mobility of students. NASSCOM was also exploring possibilities of tie up with universities in Bangalore and Delhi, to promote this model in a big way, she added.
“We also want to work on internship for students, collaborating with institutions and industries and the State and Centre,” she noted. NASSCOM was also encouraging students to participate in World Skill Competition,to be held in Brazil in 2015. , More details about this could be had from www.sscnasscom.com, Sandhya added.