Emerging tech talent gap driving upskilling demand in Indian IT

Training and upskilling sit at the core of Indian IT industry. According to studies, India requires 30 million digitally-skilled professionals by 2026. Given the huge skill gap, engineers across the spectrum need to be upskilled to keep the competitive advantage of India as a talent hub. Need for such upskilling has further improved with the advent of Generative AI. Bengaluru-headquartered Nuvepro is a leading technical workforce development solution provider that provides training and upskilling solutions to IT firms, GCCs and engineering colleges. It counts companies like Great Learning, LTI Mindtree, Capgemini, and Wipro, TCS, Upgrad and NIIT among others. In a conversation with the Bizz Buzz, Giridhar LV, Founder and CEO of Nuvepro Technologies said that the company is witnessing demand for upskilling rising in the current financial year after a low-growth seen in FY24. He said that it has launched Gen AI-based training for productivity improvement. According to the company, the demand for upskilling is more among engineers with experience (lateral) in the Indian IT industry

Can you provide a brief overview about the focus areas of Nuvepro?

Our primary focus area is training and upskilling. The way we enable our users is through hands-on activity. We are not content creators. Conceptual content is created by many other firms (like Udemy, Coursera). But, when it comes to hands-on training, you need a lab to do practical training. This will enable students to get along whatever is being taught. Also, when one user completes the conceptual training part, he/she moves on to real-world scenarios or experiential learning. In this kind of training, we provide real world scenarios to work with. These are real-world activities, which an IT engineer has to do in an IT firm.

The training is all cloud-based and remote. You can access all our solution through the browser. We have partnered with IT services companies, engineering colleges, GCCs (Global Capability Centres) and other related stakeholders. IT services companies usually have a large training infrastructure. They access our solutions virtually and train their engineers in those centres. If the customer requires trainer support, we provide that through our partner ecosystem.

Can you throw some light on Nuvepro’s inception?

We started our journey in 2014 and the work around upskilling and training started up around 2018-19. This is about 5-6 years old now. Prior to that we were working on a different problem statement but that didn’t do well. So, we switched to skilling space.

Are your training modules developed internally? Can you throw some light on this aspect?

There are a few ways through which we do this. Firstly, requirements come from the IT services companies or engineering colleges. Once we know the requirement, we have a large inhouse team, which has the capabilities of developing it. In case, we don’t have it, we partner with external organisations. For instance, we work with couple of organisations in data science space. Similarly, in cybersecurity, we work with international organisations. In Generative AI space, we are thinking of partnering with one organisation with whom we have a few rounds of discussions. But, we have almost all the capabilities to develop these training modules. As mentioned earlier, we provide exposure to real world scenarios, which help users to be hands on projects implemented by technology firms.

Do any of your client like an IT firm come up with the problem statement and ask for creating a training module for solving it? Does that work in this way?

The problem statement may not be very specific. But we have situations when customers have come back with problems that are broad in nature. For instance, customers told us earlier that they were going to take couple of cloud migration projects and the source. We had trained their staffers and got them project ready.

How many verticals do you have at Nuvepro? Can you throw some light on your client aspect?

We have more than 50 clients across our three verticals. One vertical is of higher education, second one is the upskilling platforms like UpGrad, and third one is the corporate vertical that includes IT services companies, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and other firms.

Where is the demand for training and upskilling the highest among these three verticals?

Training demand is still the highest in the IT services space because most of our customers lie in this area. We provide services to IT firms directly as well as through the training organisations. So, we do it both ways. On the GCC side, we have not very aggressive earlier. However, we will strongly focus on GCC space in the current financial year.

In the engineering colleges side, things are a little peculiar. While a few engineering colleges understand the advantage of upskilling outside of curriculum, it is not the same thinking across all engineering colleges. It also depends on the students themselves. Our success has been with those institutions which understand that more training and upskilling are required to make students industry-ready for landing a job.

Where do you see the most demand for upskilling? Is it at the fresher level, mid-level or top-level of the IT industry?

Each year, more than 50,000 jobs are created in the Indian IT industry for freshers. Similarly, around 5 lakh people are transitioning in different jobs every year. Therefore, the overall market is probably higher on the lateral side (engineers with experience). Going by the Accenture results and even if the growth rate remains at the current level; there will still be demand for training. So, training and upskilling requirement will be higher in the lateral space than freshers.

How had been your performance in the last financial year? Has low hiring impacted your business growth in FY24?

During period of low growth, IT firms usually curtail their fresher intake. So, that reduces some of the training requirements. Second thing, companies reduce their dependence on external training firms and do some part of it on their own. That also reduces some training budget. In that way, there has been some impact on us. But, we are beginning to see companies reversing their paths and they are starting to invest in training as well. So, FY24 was not a great year but in FY25, the beginning has been good.

How big is your team now? Are you planning to hire in the current fiscal year?

We are a team of around 70 people and we will be around 100 people by the end of current financial year.

Have you raised capital so far? Are you planning to raise capital in the future?

We have raised a small amount of capital. In the 10 years journey, we have raised around Rs 6 crore. Raising capital is always there in the roadmap but currently, it may not be great time to raise capital. As far as geographical expansion is concerned, we are beginning to expand outside of India. That is one of the focus areas in the current financial year.