Education firms bet big on EV, IoT as futuristic courses

How are education technology firms preparing for the new auto era? Radhika Dave takes a look at how companies are betting on an intersection of EV and AI courses to steer the future of skilling.

As electrification picks up pace in the mobility sector in the country, education firms are looking to bridge a potential skills gap as demand is expected to outpace supply. This is an area that is beginning to get attention from private educational players like Byju's whose subsidiary Great Learning aims to offer three to four courses on electric vehicles in the next couple of years, to add to its current repertoire of work on disruptive technologies, which comprise half of its current offerings.

“Automotive is a field with subdivisions and each one of these functions such as batteries, electronics, computing, and thermal management is getting reskilled," said Hari Krishnan Nair, Co-Founder of Great Learning. The company started a post-graduate programme on EV design, towards the end of last year, which already has 200-300 learners, Nair stated.

He added that going forward, there will be an increased emphasis on data in the automotive sector stating that historically, this was a business function within this space, not necessarily an engineering or technical function. “Connected systems and battery technologies are for sure going to be immediate areas of focus, and down the road, we will look at integrating more IoT, connected devices, and data into the picture,” he added.

Data, data and more data

A recent Pearson report points to data that talks about how data processing, machine learning, and IoT will be the top areas of focus in India. This is a part of the Pearson Skills Outlook: Employee View, which polled 4,000 people in four countries (US, UK, India, and Brazil) to see what skills they were prioritising for their career development.