India Need Nine Times as Many Digital Skilled Workers by 2025: AWS Report

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) unleashed the findings of their latest research report, titled “Unlocking APAC’s Digital Potential: Changing Digital Skill Needs and Policy Approaches.”

The report, prepared by strategy and economics consulting firm AlphaBeta, and commissioned by AWS, analyzes the digital skills applied by workers in their jobs today and projects the digital skills required by workforces over the next five years in six Asia Pacific countries – India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea.

The research surveyed more than 500 digital workers in India and interviewed technology experts, business leaders, and policymakers. It confirms that digital skills are important for non-technology sectors like manufacturing and education. In the manufacturing sector, cloud architecture design and the ability to create original digital content such as software and web applications will be among the most in-demand digital skills by 2025, with more than 50% of digital workers in the manufacturing sector believing that they will require these skills to perform their jobs. In the education sector, the ability to develop digital security and cyber forensics tools and techniques will be an important skill. Given the increasing use of the internet in teaching and learning, especially with remote learning, it is becoming critical to ensure that schools, teachers, and students are able to protect against cyber-attacks.

The research reveals that digitally skilled workers currently represent 12% of India’s workforce. The research estimates that the number of workers in India requiring digital skills will need to increase nine times by 2025, and the average worker in India will need to develop seven new digital skills by 2025 to keep pace with technology advancements and demand. This amounts to a total of 3.9 billion digital skill trainings from 2020 to 2025.

The report also reveals that 76% of the digital workers in India today expect cloud computing will be a required competency for digital workers to perform their jobs proficiently by 2025. Cloud architecture design, software operations support, website/game/software development, large-scale data modelling, and cybersecurity skills are the top five in-demand digital skills in India.

To develop the next generation of cloud professionals, higher education institutions in India<4> have recently integrated AWS-designed cloud computing content into their mainstream college syllabus. The cloud computing content is offered as part of the education institutions’ undergraduate degree and postgraduate diploma programs, designed to address India’s growing requirement for cloud skills in cloud architecture, data analytics, cybersecurity, machine learning, and software development.

“The research highlights the demand for more digital workers even in the non-technology sectors such as manufacturing and education,” said Rahul Sharma, President, Public Sector – AISPL, AWS India and South Asia. “AWS is committed to equipping more students and workers with cloud skills that will help drive digital transformation across all sectors. We look forward to expanding our collaboration with more education institutions and industry organizations to grow cloud-skilled talent. A cloud-skilled workforce is instrumental in accelerating innovation and creating a competitive edge for India.”

Skilling Initiatives and Announcements by AWS in India:

• In January, 2021, MeitY and AWS announced they will establish a Quantum Computing Applications Lab in India, to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries. This is the first such initiative by MeitY in India. Limited access to quantum computing hardware and expertise, and complex infrastructure setup and management, are challenges that scientists and researchers face today, in their quest for scientific discovery. The Lab will adopt AWS’s innovation methodology to enable public sector organizations, researchers, and startups to develop and experiment with quantum computing applications at low risk, while simultaneously accelerating their understanding of quantum computing possibilities.
• In August 2020, Atal Innovation Mission collaborated with NITI Aayog to launch the “ATL AI Step Up Module”, with the AI module for K12 segment being supported by AWS to provide a comprehensive set of advanced self-learning. Through AWS Educate, students will be able to gain hands-on practical experience on AWS services, including Amazon SageMaker. This initiative is expected to reach 2.5 million students and 5,000 schools in the K-12 segment.
• In August 2020, the Indian Chamber of Food and Agriculture (ICFA), an apex think tank, policy research and trade facilitation body, and resource center for the food and agricultural sector in India, announced that it is adopting AWS Educate to build deep technology cloud computing skills with students in the agricultural engineering and sciences domain.
• In July 2020, seven higher education institutions in India adopted the AWS Educate Cloud Curriculum in their mainstream college syllabus to help develop the next generation of cloud professionals. These seven institutes are: SRM Institute of Science and Technology, ASM Group of Institutes, Galgotias University, Chitkara University, Noida Institute of Engineering and Technology, Manav Rachna University, and Sharda University.

AWS provides a range of free training opportunities, including more than 500 free courses, interactive labs, and virtual day-long training sessions that are accessible through AWS Training and Certification. AWS also offers students free, self-paced, online learning content for cloud career pathways related to in-demand jobs such as cloud engineer, cybersecurity specialist, machine learning scientist, and data scientist.