Number of digitally skilled workers to grow 9X in India by 2025

The number of workers in India requiring digital skills will need to increase nine times by 2025, and the average worker will need to develop seven new digital skills by 2025 to keep pace with technology advancements and demand, a new report said on Thursday.

This means a total of 3.9 billion digital skill trainings will be required by 2025, according to a survey by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The digitally skilled workers currently represent 12 per cent of the workforce in the country.

The cloud architecture design, cybersecurity and large-scale data modelling are among the top in-demand skills in the country.

"The research highlights the demand for more digital workers even in the non-technology sectors such as manufacturing and education," said Rahul Sharma, President, Public Sector, AISPL, AWS India and South Asia.

"We look forward to expanding our collaboration with more education institutions and industry organizations to grow cloud-skilled talent," he added.

The report, prepared by strategy and economics consulting firm AlphaBeta, and commissioned by AWS, analysed the digital skills applied by workers in their jobs.

The survey included more than 500 digital workers in India and interviewed technology experts, business leaders, and policymakers.

In the manufacturing sector, cloud architecture design and the ability to create original digital content such as software and web applications will be among the most in-demand digital skills by 2025.

"More than 50 per cent of digital workers (those surveyed) in the manufacturing sector believe that they will require these skills to perform their jobs," the report noted.

In the education sector, the ability to develop digital security and cyber forensics tools and techniques will be an important skill.

The report revealed that 76 per cent of the digital workers in India today expect cloud computing will be a required competency for digital workers to perform their jobs proficiently by 2025.