Indian IT companies are turning themselves into "mini technology universities" in an effort to overcome a severe shortage of talent, according to a report in the country's Economic Times.
Firms are trying to overcome their skills gaps by setting up massive in-house training facilities and by pushing the government to reform the education system.
In another year, Infosys alone would have the capacity to train around 14,000 people a year at its global education centre in Mysore, against the current capacity of 4,500, said the newspaper.
Eventually its Mysore centre would have built up the capacity to train nearly 40,000 people a year, making it the largest investment in education space in the country.
Infosys is no exception. IT firm TCS has ear-marked 4 per cent of its total revenue for research and development, education and training.
The company has training facilities in Thiruvananthapuram and another in Hyderabad in addition to smaller training centres in each of its offices across the country, with 170 regular training faculty and other visiting trainers.
Similarly, Wipro Technologies has built a capacity to train 7,000 people a day.
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Pratik Kumar, executive VP (HR) for Wipro, said the present deployable talent pool from engineering colleges was about 20-25 per cent of the total graduates from these institutions.
This put immense pressure on IT companies to make these graduates "job-ready", so compelling businesses to invest heavily in building training facilities, education, and hiring quality teachers from academia.
The talent shortage was pushing many companies to hire physics, chemistry and biology graduates, too., said Kumar.