Empowered workers for digital world

India is one of the largest and fastest-growing markets for digital consumers. Over 500 million Indians are internet users. Technology is poised to quickly and radically change nearly every sector of India’s economy. However, millions of Indians do not have the digital technology skills and are not able to participate in new businesses or even upgrade their work in existing industries. People from low-income families are the most disadvantaged as they do not have access to training to integrate in digital economy. Training costs money which these poor families cannot afford.  Our solution is to develop 5 to 10 digital training courses which will made available on-line free of charge for all those who can participate. Making the training free of charge will allow thousands of people to participate.  As people get new skills in digital technology, they can get better jobs or engage in new industries quickly.  The training will change the lives of thousands of people by giving them access to jobs that require digital skills.  Those with digital skills have better compensation than those without it.  According to McKinsey, digital economy could create 60 to 65 million new jobs by 2025 in India.  Our local IT partner in Kolkatta, West Bengal will develop the training materials, hire trainers, and will provide the on-line trainings.  Each training will comprise of several weeks of intensive, practical sessions to build the capacity of the participants. At the end of each training completion, a completion certificate will be issued.   This program will also collaborate with current government initiated IT training programs to ensure that the trainings are aligned with national capacity building plans.

Digital applications are proliferating across most sectors of India’s economy. We see new companies are launched every day, from on-line shopping to AI technology.  Core digital sectors such as IT and business process management, digital communication services, and electronics manufacturing will continue to expand and new digitising sectors such as retail shops, agriculture, education, energy, financial services, healthcare, logistics, & government services will adopt digital applications to improve their services, save cosrs, and improve client experiences. All these will require people with digital skills from all walks of life.  Millions of students and workers do not have digital skills, especially people from low income families, slums, rural areas, etc.  Trainings can be expensive and most people can not afford these. So, our solutions is to provide free on-line training on digital technology to any one who may be able to access it.  We will communicate this opportunity to businesses, NGOs, and schools for wider dissemination of this opportunity and participation of as many people as possible.  We expect at least 2 to 3 million people will receive the digital tech training under this program over next three to five years.

Our solution will build capacity among workers and people on digital technology.  Such training will allow millions of people to continue their existing jobs with upgraded skills and also seek new opportunities.  Most businesses in India are moving toward adopting digital technology and they need trained manpower. We will conduct surveys through Face Book to get better understanding of the current needs of potential participants. We will also use government surveys and business surveys to have a better understanding of the needs.  These surveys will help us develop fit for purpose training materials. On annual basis we will do surveys to understand changing needs so that the training courses can be updated.  We will also learn proven techniques on on-line training from existing on-line training companies in the USA and other countries.  Our training will have several courses, each focusing on building specific digital expertise for the participants.

The challenge is lack of digital technology skills among a very large population especially among poor people.  Our free on-line courses will provide an opportunity to thousands of Indians to upgrade their skills and participate in the future workplaces which will be increasingly technology driven.  Our India partner, based in Kolkatta, West Bengal has a team of digital technology specialists who will develop the training materials development and drive on-line training program.  We will set up a monitoring and evaluation plan with key performance indicators to monitor progress and impact of our interventions.  Since on-line training programs are available in India, we will review existing programs to understand their quality, focus, and target audience.  Therefore, our proposed training program is not a new idea, rather it is a needed intervention to upgrade the skills of existing work force for future work in a digital world.

Taufiqur Rahman, CEO, c4ie LLC, USA  and Kaushik Bhattachrjee, CEO of PiedPiper, LLC, Kolkatta, West Bengal.  Both these team leaders have in-depth understanding of IT, digital technology, education, and project management.

No one has introduced free on-line courses in digital technology, especially for the poor. This is the innovation.  We will be partnering with community-based organizations and local businesses to maximize our outreach to reach potential participants.  We will also rely on local businesses to help participants to access our training. We will be using existing, easily available materials to develop fit for purpose training courses that will benefit thousands of people, especially people of poorer communities.  A free, on-line quality training on digital technology will help shape the market for digital skilled workers and usher in a positive impact by increasing available workers with digital skills for the expanding businesses in India.  India's exponential growth in incorporating digital technology in businesses and government will need large number of trained workers.

Existing internet services. Over 600million Indians subscribe to internet and this number is expected to reach 700 million by 2023.  We expect local businesses to allow use of their computers for their workers training. We expect local NGOs to partner with businesses and local donors to provide internet access to marginalized communities.  Innovative approaches will be discussed with the local government to provide access to computers and internet in the local communities for people to access these free training programs.

By providing free on-line training on digital technology to thousands of people, we will help people to improve their chances of participation in employment and improve their economic well-being.

Reach 50,000 people in Year 1. By year 5, we expect to reach at least 2 million people.  The large number will be possible if we can get project funding for this initiative.

Number of people completing each course successfully.  Number of people reporting better employment after completing our courses.  Number people from low income who are able to complete these courses and improved their skills in digital technology.  

We will design a proper M&E system to track impact.

Major barrier is financial support to provide on-line training.  A major initiative such as the one described will require considerable financial resources to sustain and reach millions of people.  However, the impact will be far greater than investments.

We expect to raise financial resources from donors and we hope SOLVE will help us with this by arranging initial investment.

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Our local partner, PiedPiper, has a team of IT and digital experts to support this initiative.  We also have a number of IT consultants and education consultants to draw on for this initiative.

Our team will consist of male and females from various religious and ethnic background.

Our local partner in India is PiedPiper which is a digital marketing team.

This is a project approach to develop the program and implement the program.  We have managed several large projects in health and education, and we will use the project approach for this initiative.  Our technical team will bring key expertise in the design and delivery of the on-line training program. We will also develop a financial sustainability strategy in year 1 and then operationalize it over Years 2 to 5.  We expect to partner with the local government and businesses to support this initiative after we can demonstrate successful output in years 1 and 2.