Microsoft and SAP India have announced a joint skilling programme, TechSaksham that aims to bring more women engineers into the workforce.
TechSaksham Program (TSP) is a top-up program that uses experiential learning to develop employability skills amongst underserved female students pursuing higher education in sciences, computer applications, vocational areas, and engineering, by imparting critical skills that are required to secure jobs in the market.
As a part of the initiative, courses are offered in the disciplines of web designing and digital marketing, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI). They’re available to women students studying bachelor’s and master’s courses in technology at government and government-aided colleges in their junior and senior years.
Duration: ~200 hours of learning
Locations: Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi-NCR, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu
According to industry estimates, nearly 1.5 million engineering students graduate in India every year, one of the highest in the world. However, only a small fraction of them find employment. Job opportunities dwindle further as one moves away from prestigious engineering colleges to those in the country’s hinterlands.
TechSaksham, a joint initiative by Microsoft India and SAP in India, aims to address this gap by training aspiring women engineers in relevant technology and future skills to help find them employment. TechSaksham loosely translates from Hindi to ‘Tech Capable.’
TechSaksham imparts skills around key technologies to accelerate women’s workplace participation in the digital economy.
Manju Dhasmana, regional director-MEA, Microsoft, and one of the architects of the initiative, considers TechSaksham to be a movement to connect young women from rural areas and small towns with job opportunities in cutting-edge technologies of the future.
“We’re excited to become the catalysts to help young women acquire the skills needed to join top technology jobs in India which have not slowed down despite the pandemic,” she says.
“The aim is to democratize access to skilling for women from smaller towns to make careers in technology. Currently, the job market is focused on a select group of top institutions in big cities”, she added.
The country has one of the youngest workforces in the world but with a large skill gap in the jobs of the future, and an even higher gender disparity when it comes to STEM careers.
To address this issue and attempt to turn this impending adversity into an opportunity, the Tech Saksham program aims to equip women with skills of the future and encourage them toward tech careers.
- Build Skills of the Future
- Establish college-to-industry linkages
- Build scalable ecosystems for sustenance
- Engage in a cultural relook
- Build Capacity of the support system
- Project-based learning with local context
This program consists of core technical training content of around 80 hours to be delivered in instructor-led sessions over a course of 16 weeks as per participating institution’s choice.
The total duration of this program is around 200 hours to be run over two semesters and it contains about 24 weeks of learning activities.
The program is broken into discrete modules, where each module has its objectives and learning activities.
To know more about the program click here or here.
