Birlasoft partners with Coursera to upskill employees

As part of the collaboration, all Birlasoft employees will have access to Coursera’s library of more than 9,000 courses and ‘guided projects’.

In addition, Birlasoft’s workforce will have access to programs from leading global universities like Yale University, University of Michigan and INSEAD Business School, among others. “The programs offered by Coursera on emerging technology and domain skills will enable Birlasoft employees to further enhance their knowledge on leading edge domains like Blockchain, Cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), AI/ML, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Cybersecurity, etc,” a release issued on the collaboration said.

Speaking to ET, Dharmender Kapoor, CEO of Birlasoft said the development was a “critical step” taken in the direction of talent building by upskilling and right-skilling employees.

“Earlier we were hiring people and training them, now we want to get into training them first and then hiring them to get the growth we are looking for,” Kapoor said, adding that the company which is part of the $2.4 billion conglomerate of CK Birla Group has had an internal discussion about the collaboration and soon the platform may be used across other group companies too.

Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera said businesses around the world are experiencing workforce disruption caused by the pandemic and the rapid pace of automation and such changes have increased the need for employees to develop high-demand skills faster.

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“One thing we are excited about is that many employers are building custom projects which are specific to a job role and the task used by that firm and that part of the content can be customised for each customer. Therefore, Biralsoft could build hands-on projects for their own employees but then also give the projects to students so that they can learn how to do those jobs while still at school,” he told ET.