About 94% of Indian IT grads aren't employable: CP Gurnani, Tech Mahindra's CEO

The world is changing with the advent of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain. In fact, it is now widely believed that the next industrial revolution is going to come from new-age technologies.

But the moot question that pops up at our face is, do we have skilled manpower to drive that growth? The answer is 'No', according to CP Gurnani, CEO and MD of Tech Mahindra. The top 10 IT companies take only 6 per cent of the engineering graduates, Gurnani told TOI in an interview raising questions on whopping 94 per cent of talents.

A student scoring 60 per cent marks cannot pursue BA-English today, but can definitely go in for engineering, reasoned Gurnani for the widening skill gap.

Cyber security is also expected to create 60 lakh jobs by 2022, according to Nasscom. But there is a huge shortage of skilled manpower.

Meanwhile, at his company, he claims to have created a five-acre tech and learning centre to recruit, train and retain talents.

This is not the first time that skill gap amongst engineers has been bluntly put in public. Last year Aspiring Minds report said that around 95 per cent of engineers can not code. It listed low-quality education and outdated syllabus without any practical knowledge as main roadblocks.

Employability for roles such as mechanical design engineer and civil engineer stood at a meagre 5.55 per cent and 6.48 per cent respectively, the report added.

However, IT veteran TV Mohandas Pai and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw—founder, chairperson and managing director of a biotechnology company, expressed their disagreement with the figures mentioned in the report.

Earlier, McKinsey's report had said that only 25 per cent of engineers in India were actually employable.

Over the years, India's root problem is said to be substandard education across genres including engineering. Beyond IITs, there are not many prestigious technology institutes and colleges, which are able to provide quality education to aspiring students.

According to a report, AICTE plans to close down about 800 engineering colleges across India. There are no takers for their seats, and admissions are plunging in these colleges every year. Nearly 150 colleges are closed down voluntarily every year due to stricter AICTE rules. According to a rule of the council, colleges that lack proper infrastructure and report less than 30% admissions for five consecutive years will have to be shut down.