Here’s Why Non-Technology Professionals Are Learning New-Age Technologies

The fear of losing jobs to automation is already haunting the employees of not just tech companies but individuals working in sectors like banking, telecom, government departments, etc. Now, to overcome this fear, many individuals have started learning new-age technologies like data analytics, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity.

According to an ET report, technology training course providers, in both online and offline field, have witnessed non-tech industry participation increasing by almost 40%.

Additionally, five to six digital training course providers have reported training of around 20K to 30K candidates every year for online and blended courses for six months to one year.

The media report added that most of these tech education seekers are mostly employees of banking and financial services, retail and telecom and other industries. Moreover, officials from defence forces and government departments are also signing up for training in data analytics, AI and cybersecurity.

Mohan Lakhamraju, CEO of Great Learning, technology education provider, said that earlier 90% of IT professionals were enrolled in our courses. “Now enrollment from IT sector has come down to 50% and BFSI’s (banking, financial services and insurance) employees participation is increased to 15-20% and other industries form 25%,” he added.

Another digital course provider, Simplilearn, has also noticed the increasing enrollment of employees from non-tech industries and defence institutions. Krishna Kumar, the founder of Simplilearn, said that the fear of losing jobs had an impact beyond tech services.

Kumar further said that such training was started with IT services companies, but there is a spillover impact across industry sectors.

Corporates Upskilling Their Employees

While most of the employees are looking for upskilling courses in online and classroom classes outside of their organisations, the telecom giant Airtel and watchmaker and jewellery company Titan are pushing for internal training programs for its employees.

Bharti Airtel provides upskilling courses in a large internal digital training infrastructure, where courses designed by edtech players such as Coursera and Pluralsight are taught to its employees.

On Airtel’s digital training programme, Harmeen Mehta, global CIO at Bharti Airtel said that the company provides a lot of internal training. He further added that if companies are not investing in training they will become redundant.

Further, Titan’s chief digital and information officer, Krishnan Venkateswaran, says that the company is heavily investing in digital training. “We have company-wide training programmes for training our core technology team in emerging technology areas such as omnichannel, data analytics, machine learning, RPA (robotic process automation) and mixed reality, both internally and externally,” he added.

According to a study by McKinsey Global Institute, AI-based intelligent agents and robots may eliminate 30% of the workforce across the globe by 2030. Moreover, with India’s high unemployment rates, employees are not left with any option but to learn these new-age technologies.