Wipro trust, Nasscom to hone IT skills of graduates

Bangalore: Wipro's trust Mission 10x has tied up with the National
Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) to enhance
skills of engineering graduates in IT and related sectors, the global
software major said on Monday.

"The joint initiative will offer skill development programmes such as
'foundation skills in IT' to train engineering graduates for suitable
employability in the burgeoning tech industry. Nasscom's assessment of
competence technology will be used to assess their skills through
diagnostic test and final test," Wipro human resources vice-president
Pratik Kumar said in a statement here.

About 550,000 engineering graduates pass out every year from about
3,000 engineering colleges in the country. Though India has one of the
world's largest scientific and engineering pools, the growing
demand-supply gap for skilled, industry-oriented professionals is
expected to test the limits of its manpower development capabilities.

The programmes will support deployment of e-learning content for
faculty capability building like 'Aarambh' and promote a 'unified
learning kit' to reduce the gap between academia and industry
practices in multiple engineering disciplines.

"The industry has been investing in the skill development of employees
through in-house training programmes and certification courses. To
ensure scalability, we are working with various government bodies,
members of the academia and the IT-BPO industry to enhance
employability skills amongst its prospective workforce," Nasscom
president Som Mittal said.

Launched on Teachers' Day Sep 5 2007, the not-for-profit Mission10x
empowered over 13,000 faculty members in the innovative learning
approach.

"The programme will provide an equal opportunity to aspirants from
different parts of the country who wish to join the IT industry,"
Pratik Kumar added. IANS