Right training will make youth in India’s small towns more employable: IBM India head

We find some amazing talent in small towns and cities. With the right kind of training, although some of them don’t even have formal college education, they become valuable talent,’‘ says Sandip Patel.

The right kind of training will make the youth from India’s small towns more employable by the tech industry, said Sandip Patel, MD, India and South Asia, IBM.

Commenting on India’s strengths as a large talent base during a media interaction, Mr. Patel said, ‘‘Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities and towns have a large number of young people with inherent capabilities and training can easily make them fit for technical job roles.’‘

Mr. Patel said, IBM has been conducting several skilling and training programmes for young people in small towns and cities and was also hiring them.

‘’We find some amazing talent in small towns and cities. With the right kind of training, although some of them don’t even have formal college education, they become valuable talent,’‘ he said.

According to him, several IBM job roles don’t even require a college degree. For instance, he said, IBM has taught several young girls in Nagaland how to make drones and also trained them in AI.

Speaking on the adoption of artificial intelligence in the country, he said India was witnessing a digital renaissance as the country has been a leader in tech and AI adoption.

‘’Indian enterprises are outshining their global counterparts in AI deployment and adoption,’‘ he said, quoting recent data released by IBM’s AI adoption index. Some 59% of Indian enterprises, highest across all markets worldwide, were deploying AI in some form or the other, he said, delivering the keynote at IBM Think 2024, the company’s flagship event in Mumbai.

He further said more than 30% of growing expenditure on cloud was being wasted, but in the case of AI, there was no such wastage, but scaling it was still an issue. But Mr. Patel added, over the next year, evolving regulations would begin to settle and become more definitive and that would positively push tech spending among enterprises, eventually leading to large scale AI adoption in the country.

‘’IBM has been proactive and at the forefront of providing a strong point of view to the government. Earlier this year, Christina Montgomery, our chief privacy officer, who also leads government relations, had active dialogues with regulators and ministries in terms of providing input on regulations around AI,” Mr. Patel added.

(The writer was in Mumbai at IBM’s request)

Published – November 02, 2024 07:55 pm IST

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