‘Continental promotes lifelong learning’

Anupama Raman, Global Head — Software Academy, Continental Automotive on the impact of Covid, the Academy's charter and women's participation in auto. She spoke to Brian de Souza.

 Today’s world is that of the software-defined car. As the global head of Software Academy, how does this all fit into Continental’s own vision and mission?

The automotive sector globally is undergoing a software transformation and the car is nowadays perceived as a computer on wheels. We at Continental Software Academy aim to prepare Continental globally for the software transformation that is on-going. We have a structured upskilling approach to skill various types of audiences based on various aspects of software, starting from awareness to basic to advanced and different levels of skills. We organise transformation events globally and we undertake all these activities to support and enable software and agile transformation globally across all countries. This is steered globally from India.

What were the challenges you faced during the pandemic?

At that time, everything was virtual, but the projects continued and we did not stop the process of software transformation. In fact, the demand actually peaked because of global demands. The main challenge faced by the Software Academy was that till then, we were just running a transformation charter, which itself was quite heavy in nature. It was always augmented by the local R&D and learning and development teams that existed in these 50-plus countries where we operate but suddenly when this pandemic set in, the classroom training and all other local upskilling activities were stalled.