NEAT- AICTE Partners with EdTech Startup Skill-Lync to Provide Technical Training

In an attempt to ensure that there is no hiatus in student education during the ongoing lockdown, Govt of India's All India Council of Technical Education - NEAT announced partnership with Chennai based Edtech startup Skill-Lync. The global startup Skill-Lync is first-of-its-kind engineering technical education platform that provides job leading courses for Mechanical, Electrical and Civil Engineering students in India and across the world.

During COVID19 outbreak, under this partnership, Skill-Lync has opened up its Rs. 50,000. worth Mechanical Engineers Essentials program to students from AICTE. Interestingly, they've had over 15000 subscribers to their free online coursework in the last two weeks itself and the number is growing by the day.

Given the extended at-home learning requirements that the industry is catering to, this partnership is aimed at accelerating the online learning process for mechanical, electrical & civil engineering students. Until now most computer science students had access to coding platforms that taught them industry relevant skills. But a lot of non-software core engineering domains missed out on this. This also accelerates the adoption of online learning for non-software engineering domains.

There is a great amount of push from the government to safeguard student education including professional & technical skills. Recently, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the immediate launch of 'Pradhan Mantri e-VIDYA' initiative for digital education which is likely to give a boost to Edtech startups across the nation.

[caption id="attachment_144798" align="alignleft" width="350"] (Left-to-Right) Sarangarajan V (CTO) and Suryanarayanan P (CEO)[/caption]

Speaking on the announcement, Surya P, Co-founder & CEO, Skill-Lync, said, “Our aim is to provide students access to in-depth technical skill sets that would give them a good exposure to industry oriented problems and how it gets solved. We want to ensure that students get exposed to all the technical skills that industries are/will look for. This introductory set of courses allows engineers to get a clear idea about what domain that they need to specialize in as they enter into their professional career. During these tough times, the right use of digital technologies can go a long way in achieving the goals laid out by the government. This partnership with AICTE is to support Government's initiatives in enhancing digital learning and deal with the ‘new normal' in an efficient way.”

Talking about the courses, Surya added, “Currently we are offering free courses and live bootcamps every week. These are specially designed for learning Matlab & Python for Mechanical Engineers, CFD using SolidWorks, FEA using SolidWorks and MBD using SolidWorks. These courses provide a good amount of introductory knowledge in numerical simulation, computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis and multi body dynamics.”

Amidst COVID, Skill-Lync saw 6-fold growth in its subscribers as compared to last month. The interesting thing is not only did they see traffic coming in from India, but had users signing up for the course from US, Europe and Asia. Last month the startup released a Masters in Electric Vehicle Design and Simulations coursework, which is India's first Master course to focus in the area of EV.

Skill-Lync is backed by global investors including Better Capital's – Vaibhav Domkundwar, Y Combinator and Founder of Gmail & YC Partner – Paul Buchheit.

NIIT University Welcomes Launch of NEAT Portal by MHRD to Encourage EdTech Startups

Institutes awards for faculty members and students to enhance their participation in selection of EdTech companies

Established with a vision to bring about innovation in higher education and learning in emerging areas of the knowledge society, the not-for-profit NIIT University (NU) is excited to be a part of MHRD's pioneering initiative NEAT (National Education Alliance for Technology) to encourage EdTech start-up culture amongst students in the country. The University looks forward to working with AICTE to implement MHRD's vision of harnessing technology for better learning outcomes.

Established with a vision to bring about innovation in higher education and learning in emerging areas of the knowledge society, the not-for-profit NIIT University (NU) is excited to be a part of MHRD's pioneering initiative NEAT (National Education Alliance for Technology) to encourage EdTech start-up culture amongst students in the country. The University looks forward to working with AICTE to implement MHRD's vision of harnessing technology for better learning outcomes.

The initial selection of the EdTech companies for the NEAT initiative, was done in a very innovative way by crowd sourcing suggestions from faculty members and students across the country.

To encourage the scheme of MHRD, so that more faculty members and students come forward in the forthcoming selection of EdTech companies, NU will institute 5 awards of 50,000/- each for faculty members and 10 awards for students of Rs. 10,000/- each. The awards will be determined through a rigorous process and will be announced at an appropriate time.

Being the University of the Future with an emphasis on Innovation & Entrepreneurship with deep interest in Education Technology, NU has been laying emphasis in usage of Technologies right from inception in all areas of the University including academic operations, assessments & examinations and administration.
About NU

Established in 2009, NIIT University (NU) is a not-for-profit University covered under section 2(f) of UGC Act and notified by the Government of Rajasthan. A premier institution of higher learning and research, NU seeks to create original thinkers who will lead the knowledge society of the future. The University inherits four decades of rich expertise and global know-how of its principal sponsor, the NIIT Group.

Nurtured by some of the foremost thought leaders and corporate-practitioners of the country, the multi-disciplinary University focuses on emerging areas of technology and management. NU is a part of a 100-acre campus at Neemrana, Rajasthan, 90 minutes from Delhi Airport.

Nestled in the Aravalli hills, the fully residential green campus offers an idyllic and intellectually vibrant environment for pursuing higher education and research. Set up with the vision to be the role model of learning, research, innovation and sustainability for the knowledge society, NU is dedicated to building great careers and ensuring excellent job opportunities for all its students. It has been developed as an institute of excellence to provide exceptional education based on its Four Core Principles that make learning Industry-linked, Technology-based, Research-driven and Seamless.

NU offers the entire spectrum of academic programs. At the undergraduate level, it offers BTech (Computer Science & Engineering, Electronics & Communication, Biotechnology), 4-year Integrated MBA (Marketing & Marketing Analytics, Entrepreneurship, Finance Banking & FinTech, Business Analytics, Communication & Media studies, Digital & Social Media Marketing), 4-year Integrated MSc (Computer Science), 5-year Integrated MTech and M. Tech (Educational Technology and Geographic Information Systems). In addition, NU also offers MBA, PhD programs and several Industry Sponsored Programs.

~ BusinessWire India