Nasscom partners SAP India to set up 25 NDLM centres

New Delhi: Nasscom Foundation, a non-profit organisation that’s part of software services industry lobby group Nasscom, on Tuesday said it had partnered with SAP India to establish 25 national digital literacy mission (NDLM) centres in 12 cities across India.

Nasscom Foundation is the government’s industry partner for NDLM, which aims to make more than five million individuals digitally literate in India over the next four years. Part of the Digital India initiative, it envisages making one person in every family digitally literate, imparting IT training to 5.25 million Indians.

Under NDLM, a digitally literate person is one who is able to operate electronic devices including mobile phones and tablets, send and receive emails, use social media and search the Internet for information, among other things.

Under the collaboration, SAP India, through Nasscom Foundation will impart basic computer skills at the NDLM centres in Delhi, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, West Bengal, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu among others.

The SAP professionals will teach young men and women from underprivileged communities how to send mails, use social media and leverage the Internet to avail of online government services like registering for Aadhaar cards, ration cards and PAN cards, among others.

People who do well in the course will be provided further employable skills and advanced training in topics including coding, HTML5, SAP Lumira and Internet of Things.

SAP India also plans to bring 15 of its existing training centres under the NDLM umbrella in the next couple of months, the company said. This is in line with the company’s commitment to train 100,000 individuals in digital literacy over the next three years.

“SAP is committed to the vision of Digital India and strongly believes that it is key to transforming India into a technology-driven entrepreneur superpower,” said Dilipkumar Khandelwal, managing director, SAP Labs India and executive vice president and global head of suite engineering, SAP SE.

The foundation has launched over 75 NDLM centres across India including SAP centres and plans to take this number up to 125 centres by March 2016.

Shrikant Sinha, CEO, Masscom Foundation, said, “The Foundation is well on its way to achieve digital literacy for 5 lakh citizens as earmarked by the government... We are launching a nation-wide digital literacy volunteering campaign wherein each volunteer will train at least two individuals on digital literacy skills through the newly created NDLM-MyKartavya mobile app.”

Last month, Nasscom Foundation partnered with the Indian arm of European digital services provider Atos SE to open four training centres under NDLM.