Bengaluru: IBM and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) have tied up to offer free training in areas such as emerging technologies and professional development skills. As part of this, IBM will curate online courses from Open P-TECH platform and offer it to users via NSDC’s eSkill India portal to empower Indian youth on various skills.

IBM will catalogue its 30 + Open P-TECH courses on eSkill India portal, with 60+ hours of learning, as a knowledge partner. IBM will provide online courses in emerging technologies like Cyber Security, Blockchain, AI and Machine Learning, Cloud, Internet of Things, along with professional skills, like Design Thinking to learners between 18 to 22 years for free.

“Online trainings through digital platforms like Open P-TECH and eSkill India need to be accelerated to overcome geographical and socio-economic barriers. Digital learning will enable higher participation of women in the labour workforce as the scope for employability will increase,” said Dr. Manish Kumar, MD and CEO, National Skill Development Corporation.

eSkill India is a digital skilling initiative from NSDC that currently has over 16 lakh minutes of digital courses and content across various sectors in multiple languages.

“Open P-TECH will make foundational learning in emerging technology and professional skills for the youth more accessible. Aligned to the country’s SkillIndia mission, we are taking another step in the evolution of our digital education approach to help the next generation of professionals have the exciting future they deserve.” said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India/South Asia.

IBM’s Open P-TECH, a free digital education platform, focused on emerging technologies and professional development skills, was launched in India in March 2020. The platform equips learners and educators with foundational technology competencies, along with workplace learning skills.

Under the partnership, Open P-TECH platform will offer courses to develop soft skills, interpersonal skills, problem-solving — a set of 11 key skills which are generally not available in a college curriculum, but are high in demand and are valued in the job market. Currently available in English, the platform will soon be available in various Indian languages – starting with Hindi, followed by 10 Indian languages including Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Urdu, Bengali.

IBM global CEO Arvind Krishna had a virtual meeting with Prime Minister Modi last month, where he shared the tech giant’s investment plans for the country. PM Modi had also explored the possibilities of creating India specific AI-based tools in the healthcare sector and development of better models for disease prediction and analysis and the role that IBM can play here. They also discussed issues around data security, cyber attacks, concerns around privacy, and health benefits of Yoga.