Tech giant IBM is concentrating on skilling next generation developers and building an ecosystem of skilling across the country.
Recently, it has made partnerships with universities and edu-tech start-ups, furthermore collaborated with NASSCOM and the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) to form a developer’s community.
“There are plenty of developers across the spectrum in the country. These developers have over time become key influencers, particularly with the advent of cloud, opensource architecture, and so on,” stated Seema Kumar, Country Leader, Developer Ecosystem and Startups, IBM (India and South Asia).
While expressing the importance of latest technologies including artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, blockchain, and so on, she also emphasized on the significance of upskilling and remaining up-to-date as something new or disruptive was happening constantly.
Additionally, IBM is working with universities and start-up accelerators in tier-II areas. The developer community requires the right level of tech support and intervention, Kumar added, perhaps indicating towards the tie-up with Gradvalley, an edTech start-up in Coimbatore.
Gradvalley’s main focus is on building skills around big data analytics and artificial intelligence in non-metros. Vimal Veereshwarayya, Founder-Director of Gradvalley said, “We've established an innovation lab and have five projects going. But the apathy is in getting interns. Institutions offer programmes, but the guidance/ learning path is not clear. We are conducting awareness about the learning programmes.”
Sharing a few insights on the market perception to Gradvalley's campaign, he said “our extensive digital marketing campaigns have not yielded the expected results. There were over 3,500 leads between January and mid-March 2018, but over 90 per cent were from the metros. We have visitors on the site, but they do not go beyond ‘seeing’, ‘no clicks’”, he said.