SAP India and NASSCOM Foundation jointly announced the opening of twenty five new National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) centres in 12 cities across India. This to date, is the largest number of NDLM centres launched simultaneously by any corporate.
The launch announced in the presence of Dr. Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India, aims to strengthen the Government’s vision to educate and empower the citizens with IT related skills through its flagship ‘Digital India’ programme. The states of Delhi, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, West Bengal, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu will benefit from this collaboration.
At the NDLM centres, SAP, through NASSCOM Foundation will equip young men and women from underprivileged communities with computer skills, teach them to send emails, use social media and leverage the internet to avail online government services, like registering for Aadhaar cards, ration cards, PAN cards, among others. Identified meritorious beneficiaries will be provided further employable skills and advanced training in topics such as coding, HTML5, SAP Lumira and Internet of Things.
In addition, SAP India plans to bring its existing 15 computer training centres under the NDLM umbrella in the next couple of months. Since January 2015, SAP has trained over 7000 young men and women at these 15 centres. SAP’s long-term aim through the NDLM programme is 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. “We are proud to be the national partner for the NDLM programme. This collaboration will help us equip women and youth from the marginalized sections of the society with IT skills for a better livelihood.”
Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation said, “This partnership epitomizes industry’s commitment towards Digital India. We encourage more and more corporates to take SAP’s example and utilize their CSR funds for strengthening the digital literacy initiative as we attempt to bridge the digital divide.”
Including the 25 centres from the partnership with SAP, NASSCOM Foundation has launched over 75 NDLM centres across India and hopes to reach the 125 centre mark by March 2016.
Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation, said, “The Foundation is well on its way to achieve digital literacy for 5 lakh citizens as earmarked by the government and this partnership gives us enough confidence to aim towards doubling the number. We are therefore, also 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.”
The National Digital Literacy Mission is a far-sighted, dynamic and integrated platform under the government’s Digital India initiative. The programme works towards digital literacy awareness, education and capacity building of the citizens of our country to help rural and the underserved communities fully participate in the global digital economy. NASSCOM Foundation is the industry partner to the Government of India to accomplish the first phase goal for NDLM or ‘DISHA’ by making 52.5 lakh individuals in India digitally literate in the next three to four years.