Gone are the days when Engineering was all about closed classrooms and heavy textbooks. The global demand is moving towards practical skill-based workforce and to cater to that, various organisations are building relevant infrastructure for Engineering colleges. SAP SE, which is an application software company, is one of those organisations. 

With its programme, i360, SAP aims to educate 1.5 million engineering students across 3,224 colleges with AICTE-mandated courses on machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and analytics. Neeraj Athalye, who is the head of the adoption drive for SAP India, explains the reason behind the drive, "We are doing this to comply with a new model of engineering curriculum set by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The programme aims to upskill engineering students on next-generation technologies." 

Neeraj, who stresses on the need of having skill-based talent in the country, feels that India lags behind in the race. "That's exactly why we need to build more such labs. Students need to have the knowledge and hands-on experience in cutting-edge technologies that will help take up the technical quotient of our country," he says.

But enough about students! SAP understands the need for faculty to be well-trained too. And to achieve this, they are planning to train the faculty. "We are in the first phase of setting up the labs to hold faculty enablement workshops on the i360 tools. And the first lab is already being set up at Symbiosis Skills and Open University (SSOU) in Pune," Neeraj adds. 

And that's not all. SAP even promises to facilitate competitive internship programmes for the students. Explaining how it works, Neeraj says, "SAP will help create opportunities for students to apply their knowledge on innovation projects within and outside the country." 

“There is an increasing demand for professionals who can contribute to the new digital wave. SAP Labs will imbibe the much-needed spirit of the digital world in students who will go on to accelerate innovation-driven growth in organisations, globally,” Neeraj concludes.