In India, we have seen the impact delivered through similar partnerships. This impact has been delivered through focused interventions on skilling the underprivileged youth in the country. In Budget 2025, the government outlined its ambition to achieve a 100% skilled workforce by 2047. There are still miles to go to achieve this. The future workforce in India is not adequately skilled to meet the demands of the industry, and this was laid bare in the data presented in UNICEF report in 2019. The report found that 53% of students will pass out of senior secondary school in India by 2030 without acquiring 21st century skills. This figure was worrying because it questioned the adequacy of our existing education system, and posited that there was a skilling crisis in the country.

This is not new information. The skilling crisis has been widely acknowledged by the ecosystem. In fact, the government had launched the Skill India Mission in 2015 to tackle this crisis. While it is believed that skilling interventions are undertaken to help the target audience, these interventions are also needed to support the growth of the Indian economy. This is because many industries require specialised skills that are oriented to their requirements. Newly developing industries such as semiconductor manufacturing are reeling under a skill shortage.

Even other mature industries today are facing a similar situation. The challenge for them is that they are unable to recruit individuals who need minimal training, and, therefore, this adds to their total costs incurred for employee acquisition. There is an immediate need for all entities involved to understand why we are in this predicament, when there are youth searching for quality employment opportunities and industries seeking to hire these skilled individuals.

The impediment is that skilling initiatives are not easily accessible to many outside of limited urban areas. In addition to this, underprivileged and rural youth also find it expensive to undertake training programs. To address accessibility related challenges, a 2022 report by WEF, UNICEF and YuWaah recommended the use of digital interventions as a means to reduce inequities in education-related access in India, and to enhance their outcomes.

This has been widely acknowledged by the government and private sector. Towards this effort, the government had launched the Skill India Digital Hub with partnerships with large private entities to provide skill-oriented training through digital platforms. Largely, the platform offers free courses through a mobile-first approach. This solves for both geographic accessibility and affordability.

However, there continues to remain the challenge of how to measure the efficacy of these training programmes. There have been questions raised on the impact of training programmes in the past, and this is partly true because there continues to be a skill-gap in almost 50 percent of our country’s graduates. One of many reasons for this is that pre-technology, learnability and subsequent employment was a challenge for students. This is why the focus of the last decade has been on integrating technology with skilling initiatives, to improve learning and employment outcomes.

Recently, the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship partnered with Meta to deploy an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant for different initiatives. This assistant would be integrated to offer 24/7 support to discover course information, course content, access course videos and so on. Using technology, the partnership between the government and Meta is trying to make training a continuous learning experience, without it being limited to the lecture hours.

Similarly, partnerships between private sector and non-profits are enabling the same today. Large enterprises such as Wipro, Amazon, P&G and Education Initiatives are partnering with non-profits to infuse technology into the education and skilling process. The use of technology is not just limited to course delivery, but is now also being used to help trainees to seek jobs. AI is now being provided to students to practice for mock interviews at their convenience. The perspective on skilling is changing from a point solution to one that is rooted in continuous learning.

Technology is a key driving force, because it promotes learning from an availability view as students are being able to access content, practice and interact beyond the allocated face-time with trainers. This is being enabled through partnerships between private and nonprofits. While private entities have the willingness to drive change in society, they partner with non-profits who have significant expertise and local-level access to successfully implement programmes.

It is becoming more evident that technology infusion in the skilling and education process can promote societal value. This is because the efficacy of skilling initiatives is improving day by day, and this is already resulting in quality employment. Partnering with the industry, for the government and non-profits is resulting in quality outcomes.

Partnering with the industry, the government has already enabled quality training for lakhs in India. Simultaneously, nonprofits are partnering with the industry to provide skill interventions deep into rural parts. These partnerships have made a significant stride towards high quality skill training, through enhancing the overall experience using technology.

This article is authored by Vikram Kumar, national head. partnerships and communication, NIIT Foundation.