Skill development: The Directorate General of Training (DGT), under the aegis of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), is partnering with Amazon India’s cloud services arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) India to upskill students in cloud computing, data annotation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), to boost their capabilities and employability. In a statement, DGT said students enrolled in the institutions under the DGT will benefit under the tie-up. DGT implements long-term institutional skill training in the country through its network of about 15,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and 33 National Skill Training Institutes (NSTIs).
AWS India will provide online learning programmes in emerging technologies at no cost to students. The learning programmes will be available on DGT’s Bharat Skills platform which is a central repository of updated curriculum, course content, digitally blended content, question banks, and learning videos of all courses under the Craftsmen Training Scheme (CTS) and Crafts Instructor Training Scheme (CITS).
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“We are making training on high-demand, emerging technologies available to students, opening up new opportunities for them, and enhancing their employability. Through this initiative with AWS, we are happy that students from ITIs and NSTIs can gain in-demand skills and hands-on experience in important areas such as cloud computing, data annotation, AI, and ML, said Atul Tiwari, Secretary, MSDE.
DGT said that AWS India will also enable it to train students in data annotation and labelling, using Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth that enables labelling of training data for machine learning at scale. Data annotation is the practice of assigning descriptive labels to specific elements within training data, including text, images, audio, or video. This process enables machines to comprehend the content and identify its significant aspects accurately.
Moreover, AWS will also provide nominated education institutions under DGT with ready-to-teach cloud computing curriculum that prepares students to pursue industry-recognized certifications and in-demand cloud jobs.
Sunil PP, Lead—Education, Space, Non-profits, Channels and Alliances, AWS India Private Limited said, “Cloud computing, AI, and ML are transforming nearly every industry, and developing a workforce skilled in these technologies is important to drive innovation and enhance the country’s competitiveness. By offering industry-relevant AWS-based curriculum and learning resources to learners and educators, we are investing in education at large, and developing India’s future digital workforce.”
The trend towards cloud adoption has been growing, especially since the pandemic necessitated organizations of all sizes to rapidly transform into digital businesses, innovate their business model, and enable remote working through several cloud-enabled services.
According to the research “Asia Pacific Digital Skills Study: The Economic Benefits of a Tech-Savvy Workforce”, 92 per cent of the 769 employers surveyed in India say at least one of the emerging technologies including AI, edge and quantum computing, blockchain, and cryptocurrency, is likely to become a standard part of their future business operations.