Puneet Chandhok, president for India and South Asia at Amazon Web Services (AWS), cited an internal report to state that in the next three years, three of every five professionals in India will feel the need to learn cloud-related skills to progress their careers. AWS says its programmes are aimed at fulfilling this gap, which includes initiatives such as Amazon Restart.
Amazon Restart is a free, 12-week skill development programme targeted at unemployed and underemployed individuals, whom AWS helps in finding employment at basic levels for cloud computing and services-linked roles. Under Restart, the company has established partnerships such as with rural and semi-urban education development body, All India Society for Electronics and Computer Technology (Aisect) and consulting group IPE Global.
The company has also struck partnerships with corporate organizations such as financial analysis firm Perfios and consultancy firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Such partnerships are aimed at upskilling mid- and early-career level professionals in skills related to cloud computing and services on AWS.
To be sure, AWS is not the only big tech firm that has an active training and upskilling program in India. Microsoft, which is Amazon’s biggest competitor in the cloud services and computing sector with Azure, offers similar training programs under its India Skilling Initiative. In January this year, the company expanded on its umbrella offering with skilling programs directly targeting small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the country.
During its announcement of its digital skilling programs for SMBs, Microsoft had said its Global Skills Initiative programme had helped more than 30 lakh individuals in India gain digital skills across various industries and areas of interest, which included cloud computing as well.
Google India, too, announced a Career Certificate for Upskillers program in November last year, aiming to upskill 10 lakh individuals in digital skills that include cloud services, by 2023.
Debjani Ghosh, president of trade association Nasscom, said today that such skilling programmes should hold “national priority", and called for “collaboration across government, corporates and industry associations" to facilitate the same.
