Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH), an initiative by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), was showcased as a tool that transformed India’s skill development ecosystem at the International Labour Organization (ILO) convened the Global Skills Forum.
Continuous skill development and lifelong learning are crucial for driving economic prosperity, empowering individuals to thrive through meaningful employment, and advancing equality and resilience within communities. Continuous skilling, reskilling and upskilling people of all ages have become a necessity of today’s world. Against this backdrop, ILO believes that building an agile workforce capable of navigating the fast-changing labour market is crucial.
In this context, SIDH has been a testament to NSDC’s commitment to bring scale and speed to India’s skilling ecosystem. So far, NSDC has trained 36 million+ candidates, including 16.1million+ women, 5.4 million+ candidates from social backward communities and close to 200K+ people with special abilities. The nodal agency has also successfully placed 9 million+ youth.
As part of capacity building, NSDC has 46K+ skill assessors, 70K+ skill teachers and 1 billion+ financing facilities. Furthermore, covering 750+ districts, its network consists of 36 Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) imparting industry-relevant skill training to the youth and 35k+ employers offering job opportunities.
While participating in the panel discussion on “Human-Centered Digital Transformation of Skills Development” at the Summit, Shreshtha Gupta, Executive Vice President (IT & Digital), National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) & Director & CTO, NSDC International, said, “Skill India Digital, a comprehensive digital platform is poised to revolutionize the education and skill development landscape. Conceptualized during the COVID-19 pandemic, the platform addresses the skilling needs of India’s diverse demography. She further said that SIDH platform is built as a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) with open-source cloud hosted architecture enabling quick configuration to meet skilling needs of other countries. I am confident that ILO serves as a catalyst in improving user engagement, expanding reach, and advancing collaboration with global countries”.
She narrated an inspiring story of a young girl living from young remote area of Jammu & Kashmir who got benefited from the Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH). “The young girl always aspired to pursue a career in cybersecurity, but due to the lack of resources, quality education and relevant skill-building opportunities, she wasn’t able to reach her full potential. The SIDH proved to be a gamechanger that empowered her with personalized learning experiences, streamlined verification processes, and improved career guidance, allowing her to turn her aspirations into tangible realities,” Gupta said.
She further pointed out that SIDH also takes forward the National Skill Development Corporation’s (NSDC) vision of skills for all, anytime, anywhere by creating an innovative platform to cater to both job seekers on one side and employers on the other side. It simplifies hiring and makes apprenticeship and job opportunities discoverable.
