The Dark Side of AI Upskilling in Indian IT
Indian companies are looking to upskill around 85% of their workforce with generative AI in FY25. This marks one of their largest investments in measuring the ROI of AI, yet the quality of the training offered remains questionable. A former employee of Infosys, who wanted to maintain anonymity, told AIM that when their company partners with the likes of NVIDIA, Google, or Microsoft for training their employees in generative AI, the outcome is not that great since the actual training is done in partnership with smaller firms offering entry-level courses at cheaper rates. He explained that most of the training programmes involve presentations and slides where they simply need to press ‘next’ a few times over, answer a few multiple choice questions, answers to which can be easily found on Google, and certify themselves as ‘GenAI Trained’. Therefore, these programmes can sometimes be more attractive for firms, as they can “train” their employees in generative AI while paying a lower price and coming across as better service providers to clients. When it comes to the big-tech partnerships for training, the employee said that the target usually is to take 2-3 years to make the workforce “GenAI Ready”, which is a lot of time, and most do not even have concrete plans ready yet. He explained that this is because most Indian IT companies are focused on providing services rather than building products for their clients. The employees’ tasks mostly involve working with chatbots or copilots and helping their clients, which does not require much knowledge of generative AI. The employee added that there are always smarter ways to train engineers in generative AI, like letting them experiment with tools like Cursor or GitHub Copilot. However, companies are sceptical of such tools and hesitant to test them as their code bases are proprietary. But, this is slowly changing as some companies have started partnering with GitHub and other AI tool providers to enable their employees to experiment with the tools. Emails sent to Infosys and TCS did not elicit any response. Clicking ‘Next’ is All You Need This was also revealed earlier by a user on X when he said that even though around 900,000 employees have been trained in generative AI, the depth and quality remain questionable. “A friend of mine works at one of the largest IT companies in India, and she just completed a GenAI course in an hour by clicking the next button 100s of times. She is now part of a GenAI-ready workforce! Proud of her :).” Even though many companies offer in-depth courses for their employees, the trained workforce remains underutilised. “Such certifications and credentials are bogus, rather a waste of time and effort,” said a user on X. “There is a huge gap between the demand and the quality of candidates that exist in the AI job market, especially for GenAI.” The number of employees trained in India is close to 2.5 lakhs as of this month. Most of these are from Indian IT companies where generative AI training is mostly compulsory to sit through, even though it does not offer any benefits for them. There’s an upskilling mania of sorts currently sweeping across the tech industry. Today, it is generative AI skills. In the future, it might be something else. “IT changes so rapidly that you have to learn until the end of your career,” said a user on Reddit. With the advent of every new technology, be it Python, cloud, or AI, long-standing Indian IT employees need to keep upgrading to keep up. Just Another Trend? “Just like with the metaverse c**p the other year, we have to let companies know that we have some level of competency in generative AI,” said a user on Reddit. Mrinal Rai, assistant director and principal analyst at ISG, told AIM that Indian IT clients will prioritise the extent to which service providers need a workforce trained in key AI technologies. This suggests that having a well-trained team is seen as a competitive advantage and a deciding factor for clients when selecting a service provider. Rai added that smaller AI firms currently don’t have much influence or recognition among clients regarding their ability to meet training needs. As a result, clients would prefer larger or more established firms for AI training and implementation. That is probably why all the bigger IT firms are rushing to call their workforce ‘GenAI ready’, even if that requires minimal training, to appeal to clients. What Needs to Change Krishna Vij, VP of IT hiring at TeamLease Digital, told AIM that upskilling programs in the Indian IT industry have evolved in recent years, focusing on emerging technologies like AI, cloud, and data science. “The best programs prioritise hands-on learning and problem-solving. While large companies are investing in structured platforms, there’s still room to tailor programs to specific roles and ensure they go beyond basic knowledge for competence building and driving efficiency,” Vij said. Vij said that training programs facilitated as ‘click-through’ sessions clearly reveal a design gap, prioritising compliance over actual skill-building. “Effective upskilling isn’t about ticking boxes; it’s about formats that truly engage like interactive modules, case studies, hackathons, and real-world applications,” she said. Vij added that many companies are making significant investments in this direction by providing employees with the opportunities to work on live AI projects, which ensures practical learning that translates into meaningful competence and career relevance. Satya Nadella, on his recent visit to Bengaluru, highlighted that Microsoft was committed to upskilling 10 million people in AI by 2030. Now, this is definitely something to keep an eye out for.
“Effective upskilling isn’t about ticking boxes; it’s about formats that truly engage like interactive modules, case studies, hackathons, and real-world applications.”
For those training programs being facilitated as ‘click-through’ sessions, it clearly reveals a gap in design, prioritising compliance.
["AI in Indian IT", "New AI Skills"]
["AI in Indian IT", "data science", "GenAI", "AI", "New AI Skills", "chatbots", "ML", "Python", "Aim", "generative AI", "copilots", "R"]
["AI", "ML", "data science", "generative AI", "GenAI", "Aim", "copilots", "chatbots", "Python", "R"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.