NIIT Limited has won the award under Education Category for 'Vocational & Skill Development Training Institute' at the 17th Franchise Awards 2019. The award was received by Kshitij Jain, Vice President, Skills and Careers Business (India), NIIT Ltd. at a recent ceremony organized in New Delhi.

Established in 1981, NIIT has today grown to be a global leader in skills and talent development providing career related learning solutions to Individuals, Enterprises and Institutions in diverse areas including Digital Transformation, Data Analytics, Software Development and many other new-age career streams.

Recently NIIT announced the Future Ready Talent initiative to encourage aspiring professionals to enhance their knowledge through future ready programs, together with their regular academic curriculum. NIIT is also spearheading and enabling digital transformation globally through its incubated venture StackRoute. Stackroute is a digital transformation partner for corporates to build multi-skilled full stack developers at scale.

Franchise Awards 2019 are India's Topmost Honour in Franchising. Returning in its 17th consecutive year, Franchise Awards 2019 highlights those remarkable organizations that have, demonstrated that franchising success is more than the sum of its parts. The Franchise Awards put standards, ethics and best practice at the top of their agenda. Through positive recognition of those that lead the way, the franchise awards are seen as the industry's top accolade.

- To prepare graduates and finance professionals for 'Finance of the future'

KPMG in India, a leading professional services firm and NIIT Limited, a global leader in Skills and Talent Development, entered into an exclusive partnership to launch the KPMG NIIT Finance Academy in India for building skills and talent for Finance of the Future. This was announced on the side-lines of Confluence 2019, NIIT's annual customer conference, tailor-made for leaders to come together, connect, and collaborate to discuss the role of learning in driving transformative growth in the wake of digital disruption faced by businesses across the world.

Designed as a centre for future skills in finance, the Academy will offer futuristic programs in finance to fresh graduates and experienced finance professionals to address the changing talent requirements that evolving business models, regulatory changes and new-age technologies are bringing forth as they drive both disruption and transformation in the finance function.

As per KPMG International's recently released 'Future Ready Finance Survey 2019 – Learn what high-performing organizations are doing differently', one of the top 5 goals and initiatives is to 'Invest in and enhance finance talent and skills'. Further, 78% of surveyed Finance executives expect automation to significantly impact its workforce by liberating staff from spending time on manual processes and freeing them to focus on higher value-added activities. As per this survey report, in addition to traditional finance competencies, future finance teams will require process management and exceptional management skills to administer digitally enabled processes, digital finance experts and data scientists to analyse internal and external data to provide critical insights to the business.

This indicates that the finance function across organizations and geographies is experiencing an increasing skills gap as most of these future oriented skills are in short supply and high demand. To this end, the finance academy jointly set up by KPMG in India and NIIT has designed programs to cater to the future-ready talent requirements for the industry.

Sai Venkateshwaran, Partner and Head of CFO Advisory at KPMG in India and Global Lead for Smart Digital Finance, said, "The finance workforce of the future will need well rounded finance technical skills combined with data utilisation and technology skills and broader behavioural skills. We believe that this finance academy will help address a critical component on talent and skills that forms part of the finance transformation journeys of all large organisations in India."

Karan Marwah – Partner and head of the KPMG Academy at KPMG in India, said, "Changes in the way businesses operate and are governed by evolving regulations and rapid advancement in technology are disrupting the finance function, leading to the automation of traditional financial tasks like bookkeeping, financial analysis and forecasting. With the launch of this finance academy we are confident of creating a large pool of industry-ready talent who are ready to meet the needs of the finance functions of the future."

The Academy will primarily offer four programs: a program for fresh graduates who aspire for a career in finance; a similar program to help companies in on-boarding fresh talent; an intermediate program for companies to upskill and reskill mid-level finance executives and an advanced program that will help companies to upskill and reskill experienced finance professionals.

In addition, the learners from the graduate program will get placement opportunities for finance and accounting roles with some of the biggest companies operating in the country.

All programs of this finance academy will be taught by qualified and experienced finance faculty. Apart from the regular faculty, all the programs will have guest lectures by finance industry experts who will familiarize the participants with the latest industry trends. The academy will be located at NIIT's Gurgaon centre and most of the classes will be conducted there. However, based on client requests, some B2B programs may be conducted at client locations. The Academy will also offer customized modular programs for companies as per their requirement.

- To extend its Future Ready Talent initiative by reaching out to 50 colleges nationally

NIIT Limited announced 'FutureFest', an initiative to encourage college students to enhance their knowledge on new-age skills through future ready programs, together with their regular studies and academic curriculum. NIIT will organize career fests nationally across 50 colleges in India wherein experts will reach out to 25,000 students, educating them about the importance of future ready careers.

During the college fests, NIIT will organize career counselling, expert talks, music concerts, and a few fun activities across the campus to help students get a peek into the careers of the future.

According to the Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum), jobs in digital technology will grow from 17 % in 2018 to 33 % in 2022. Estimates have indicated that 75 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines, while 133 million new roles may emerge that are more adapted to this model. This demonstrates a huge requirement of skilled employees for futuristic industry 4.0 job roles.

Towards this, NIIT offers new age programs in Digital Marketing and Branding, Data Analytics, Full Stack Software Engineering, Banking and Finance and Accounting & Business Analytics.

NIIT's 'Future Ready Talent' is a recent initiative where seminars were held nationally across 26 centres in India, along with Industry deliberations & conferences. Successful leaders from diverse fields shared their experiences with the students, educating them about the importance of new-age future ready careers, as also deliberating what it will take for aspiring professionals to be Future Ready.