New Delhi, Delhi, India

The IT sector in the country is going through a transformational phase. Technology is changing, services are getting automated and increasingly India's traditional service based IT industry is shifting to software and innovation based.

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But are the colleges and engineering institutions in the country catching up with the changing requirement? The larger opinion is in the negative. 

The needs of the fast-changing Indian IT are being met by, what Dr Somdatta, Co-chair of the NASSCOM Product council terms, a robust parallel training and hiring sector.

Institutions are spurting across the country that are picking candidates from underprivileged backgrounds, diploma holders, 12th standard graduates or college dropouts and are training them in web technology, app development and coding. 

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"Some skills don't require theoretical education. They can be taught on practical application. That ecosystem is becoming very robust now," says Dr Somdatta. 

Institutions like Zoho in Chennai and Navgurukul in Delhi-NCR are changing lives of students, who have the talent but lack opportunities. Several start-ups in the IT capital of Bengaluru are also choosing to pick candidates purely based on their talent and less on the college that they studied in or the degree that they hold.

One of the biggest reasons for such a demand in a country that produces 1.5 million engineers every year is the quality of talent.

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The National Employability Report by Aspiring Minds in 2016 found that only 8% of Indian engineers were employable in core engineering sectors.

The changing technology and lack of quality talent is leaving a huge gap, that is being filled by these trained professionals. 

Nikhil Jois, a 27-yr-old entrepreneur from Bengaluru, also an engineering dropout feels that very little of the syllabus taught to them over the 8 semesters has practical usage.

'Most of what is taught is useless on the job. It would be better if colleges encouraged learning rather than ensuring students mug up their way to clearing exams', says Jois.

His start-up Eventosaur hires candidates from such unconventional backgrounds and trains them extensively over several months. 'It's a clean slate as far as we are concerned.

We only want to know if they have the potential and the hunger in them.

We then assign them to a mentor. They get to shadow their mentor over the next few months where they attend meetings, write mails, draft presentations etc. The learning happens on the job', says Jois.  

The hypergrowth software startups are worlds apart from India's traditional service-based IT industry and demands candidates who can unlearn, relearn and update quickly.

Also business managers consider such candidates as assets to the company as they are grateful and more loyal to the organisation in comparison to engineering graduates.

MNCs such as BOSCH and HCL have set up their own training centres, whereas other major companies such as PwC and Flipkart have started accepting candidates without a formal degree, at least for some posts. 

'Digital means, being able to automate most of the things that are today tangibly handled, over digital.

To be able to do that you need skilled people who can make that happen', says Dr Somdatta, while reiterating that the trend is a wake up call to colleges across the country to upgrade, or face the threat of becoming irrelevant.