Need UPI moment for AI talent ecosystem, says Harsh V Shringla

CHENNAI: Engineering education needs a change that will replicate the influence and impact of UPI, a member of the parliament said here.

Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Rajya Sabha MP, former foreign secretary, ambassador to the US and chief coordinator for India’s G20 presidency, chief guest, made this observation while unveiling Revature’s flagship report – Engineering India’s Next Engineer, co-authored by Ashwin Bharath, co-founder and chairman, Revature and Tan Moorthy, chief executive officer, Revature.

Shringla called for a nationally coordinated transformation of engineering education – drawing a parallel to India’s landmark payments revolution and said, “We need a UPI moment for AI talent – deliberate, fast and nationally coordinated, exactly as UPI was when the world doubted it could be built at all.”

Revature, an AI-native talent transformation platform, hosted an educational summit in the city. Titled ‘AI Academy In a Box National Summit on the Future of Indian Engineering Education in the Age of AI’, this event saw the participation of leaders from 40 institutions from across the country, along with ETS, NASSCOM, NIELIT, policymakers, employers and industry veterans.

The employers present collectively enabled over 10,00,000 technology careers, the academic leaders in attendance graduate more than 15,00,000 and ETS has administered over 50 million assessments worldwide.

Ashwin Bharath, co-founder-chairman, Revature, said, “I have spent twenty years helping young people take their first step into a technology career, and I have never seen that first step as difficult as it is today. This generation is not less capable, it is entering a market that changed faster than the system meant to prepare them. That is not their failure, it is ours to fix.”