The advent of internet of things, blockchain, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and self-driving cars has also created huge business opportunities for online training platforms such as Udacity and Coursera.
Indian IT services companies are relying on MOOCS (massive online open courses) to retrain their workforce as the demand for new-age technologies picks up.
The advent of internet of things (IoT), blockchain, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and self-driving cars has also created huge business opportunities for online training platforms such as Udacity and Coursera.
Udacity has trained around 100 Infosys employees in autonomous car technologies, and will soon teach two more batches of workforce from India and abroad. It is also working with firms such as Wipro, Mindtree, and Tech Mahindra to provide courses on emerging technologies.
"Our India business grew by 200 per cent last year with a sound demand coming from both enterprise and individual segments. We have readily deployable enterprise-learning solutions that are our key differentiating factor," said Ishan Gupta, managing director at Udacity India.
Coursera, online course provider having around 3.4 million learners in India, has partnered with domestic IT services players such as Infosys and Mindtree. The company is adding around 60,000 learners onto its platform every month.
"We offer courses in new-age technologies to IT services. For example, Google Cloud is exclusively available on Coursera. A lot of our offerings are highly customised to suit the requirements of enterprises," said Raghav Gupta, director, India and APAC, Coursera.
India has grown to become the second-largest market for the firm in terms of user base and revenue just in three years since the US-based company started its operations.
Re-skilling of employees in the IT sector has become an imperative due to a change in the business model.
"In the past year, almost 100 per cent of our employees have gone through various training programmes (digital as well focused and scheduled class room sessions) to constantly improve their current skills and the latest additions in the technology space," said Thirumala Arohi Mamunooru, vice-president and head of education (training and assessment), Infosys.
The company has designed an internal learning platform 'Lex', which can be accessed anytime and anywhere by the employees.
TCS has trained over half of its 400,000 workforce in digital skills by the end of last fiscal year. It also uses its 'Ion' platform as the backbone for its re-skilling services.
Mindtree said the firm was offering over 2,000 courses in digital, testing, infra, behavioural, and engineering through its digital learning platform 'YORBIT'.
"Over the past one year, almost 80 per cent of our employees have been re-skilled in these technologies," Krishnan KS, associate vice-president (culture and competence) at Mindtree.
Digital accounts for around 25-30 per cent of the sector's gross earnings. In the June quarter, digital constituted 25 per cent of the revenues at Tata Consultancy Services, with an annual growth of 40 per cent.
Similarly, Infosys posted a 26 per cent growth in its digital revenue contributing 28.4 per cent of its gross revenue. For Wipro, digital revenue pie stood at 28 per cent of its IT services revenues in the Q1FY19.
