It’s boom time for blockchain courses in India : Rashtra News
#boom #time #blockchain #courses #India
Job postings saw an annual jump of 37% in 2021 and grew 138% in the three years since August 2018, according to an August 2021 report by job search platform Indeed.
Demand for these jobs among Indian software developers spiked 76% annually.
Anticipating strong demand, edtech platforms, colleges and even premier institutes in India are launching blockchain-related courses.
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, for instance, is set to launch a blockchain innovation centre at its premises.
“Faculty members from different departments such as mechanical engineering, applied mechanics, and computer science engineering are coming together to create an interdisciplinary centre,” said Prabhu Rajagopal, professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT-Madras.
The programme will be supported by an Indian crypto exchange, which will help host blockchain summits, fellowships in blockchain development and funding research.
The centre, Rajagopal said, will not only work on research but also explore developing products for the industry. “We will look at these products in terms of particular relevance to the Indian market, where IT hardware has not penetrated a lot, and while network coverage is increasing, the bandwidth remains limited. We’ll look to work on these by leveraging blockchain technologies,” he added.
Rajagopal said the centre would work on a hub-and-spoke model. For example, interested companies could fund a hub where professors would lead research initiatives. Students working in these research areas would then move to build products and solutions suited to the core needs of the company that sponsors the hub.
More such centres could open up, boosting jobs in India. In September 2021, a report by industry body Nasscom and Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX estimated that by 2030, India could have over 800,000 jobs created in blockchain and other web3-related fields. In January 2022, a market report by Linkedin stated that in the US, job opportunities in the blockchain and cryptocurrency fields rose by 395% year-on-year in 2021, outpacing the growth of jobs in the overall technology sector.
Edtech platforms said early signs of this rise in demand for blockchain-related jobs in India could already be seen. According to Byju’s-owned Great Learning, the startup has witnessed an average growth pace of 129% every six months since it launched courses around blockchain in July 2020.
Arjun Mohan, chief executive officer of online education platform Upgrad, said the company had seen a 50% rise in demand for its blockchain-related courses in the past year and a corresponding rise in revenue earned from these courses.
Upgrad launched its first blockchain courses in 2018. “We’re seeing the higher-priced courses seeing more takers among the new enrolments, and nearly 100% increase in revenues from these courses over the past year,” he noted.
According to Mohan, the rise in demand for these courses is typically linked to increasing job opportunities, and the early takers are mostly developers working in conventional or legacy technology fields looking to upskill themselves. However, he also added that blockchain courses still account for less than 10% of Upgrad’s overall revenue, suggesting that opportunities in the blockchain development space are not entirely widespread as of now.
IIT-Madras, on its part, is looking to set up an alumni-driven deeptech funding initiative to back student projects in blockchain development and quantum computing, among others. Such funding efforts, according to Rajagopal, could drive the application of blockchain technologies in the Indian context, thereby boosting jobs.
In turn, this would further increase interest among students and professionals, leading to the blossoming of a burgeoning industry.
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( News Source :Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Rashtra News staff and is published from a www.livemint.com feed.)
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