Tech Mahindra reskilling employees amid automation

BENGALURU: Tech Mahindra has undertaken a slew of measures to reposition itself as a digital transformation company amid continuous downsizing by IT organisations in India.

The IT services giant is reskilling employees through a three-tier internal training programme structure and collaboration with online education companies such as EdCast, Pluralsight and Coursera, among others.

Atul Kunwar, chief technology officer, Tech Mahindra told ET that some 90,000 of their global IT staff are being trained internally for digital transformation courses."We have around 30 people in the reskilling department whose purpose is to look for new courses. We push our staff for courses keeping in mind the direction the industry is going."

Kunwar felt automation is inevitable in repetitive jobs and reskilling is a priority. "Today, education has to be self-driven and the organisation's role is to provide access. Areas such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), data analytics, Internet of Things and machine learning (exist), wherein the current workforce can train themselves in a slew of courses that are out there for future prospects."

The company is open to increasing investment in the internal startup programme, though Kunwar pointed out that a breakthrough application is still awaited. ET had reported that Jagdish Mitra, who heads the Growthfactories initiative for startups, said they have reached out to venture capital firms and equity players to get external fun ding for three startups that had been created internally.

Tech Mahindra is also in the process of expanding the BPO and telecom operations in Ireland. "Ireland is a very important destination for us. We plan to expand research and development in BPO and telecom area. We have even set up a new 50-member telecom technology centre in Dublin and shall scale that up too," said Kunwar.