Generative AI courses in hot demand as more Indians flock to upskilling platforms

Rohan Sharma (name changed), 41, had seen three of his colleagues resign and secure new jobs with sky-high salary hikes in November 2021. He had read about the Great Resignation, but seeing fellow employees leave made Sharma introspect about his career, too.

A technology graduate from Odisha, Sharma had 14 years of work experience as an engineer in the power and energy sector and had not seen any exceptional jump in his salary for several years now.

He began his hunt, in early 2022, for online courses that could make him eligible for a better paying job. A former colleague suggested Sharma sign up for courses around machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), as such skills have been in demand.

He took up a 12-month-course offered by an online upskilling company, and right when he was about to finish the course, Generative AI (GenAI) took the tech ecosystem by storm. Chalk it up to luck, Sharma now has all the right skills up his sleeves at a time when tech companies are keenly seeking them, to gain an edge in the AI race.

In no time, he landed a data analyst’s role in an Indian IT services major at a massive salary hike of 200 percent.

Sharma is not alone. With a growing number of Indian companies actively hiring professionals with expertise in GenAI and related disciplines, tech talent in India is seizing the opportunity to capitalise on this trend by upskilling.

Also Read: Salaries, skill sets, open roles: All you need to know to build a career in Generative AI

“We have seen a strong demand coming out of India Inc for many of our AI- related courses, with enrolments in one increasing over 100 percent during Q1FY23 as compared to the previous quarter,” said Mayank Kumar, co-founder and managing director of upskilling unicorn, upGrad.

With demand for such courses sky-rocketing, many upskilling startups have added AI, ML, Data Science, Prompt Engineering, GenAI bootcamp and other related courses to their curriculum.

Hari Krishnan Nair, co-founder of Great Learning, told Moneycontrol that with GenAI coming into the mainstream after the launch of ChatGPT by openAI in December 2022, the upskilling startup immediately added modules on the technology into their existing courses, and launched short courses on it too.

“Great Learning Academy witnessed 2.5 times increase in monthly enrolments for generative AI courses in the last three months,” said Nair.

Moneycontrol has put together data on 30 such courses hosted by about eight upskilling startups in India. Here is all you need to know about them.

To be sure, Moneycontrol does not promote these courses; the data on them have been shared by respective companies.

Top GenAI courses - Part 1 *Course fee for Great Learning's MIT NO Code AI & ML Program - Rs 2.04 lakh.

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Foundational courses for GenAI

“AI domain courses have seen more than 3 times growth in monthly enrolments when compared to pre- and post-ChatGPT launch,” Nair added.
It is evident that with GenAI entering the ecosystem, the demand for existing AI, ML and Data Science courses have also increased.

“Over the past year, we have definitely seen a surge in demand for its data science and ML courses, as they serve as the bedrock for generative AI models to produce innovative and original content with creative capabilities,” said Ankush Singla, CEO and co-founder of Coding Ninjas.
Abhimanyu Saxena, co-founder of Scaler, told Moneycontrol that the increased accessibility of open-source platforms has resulted in the increased popularity of these courses.

“In the past, ML and AI were often perceived as complex and challenging fields, which limited the number of individuals who could explore and experiment in these areas. However, with the development of numerous working models and the availability of open-source resources, these technologies have become accessible to a larger audience,” Saxena added.

Also Read: Explained: What powers ChatGPT and Bard? A look at LLMs or large language models

Upskilling startups, going forward, also plan to introduce new courses in an attempt to keep educating tech talent on GenAI.

“We are planning to launch new courses in Prompt engineering, Bard for Coders, Data Analysis in Excel & Python using ChatGPT/Bard etc. These new courses aim to cater to various interests and skill levels, providing learners with a diverse range of opportunities to explore and upskill in the generative AI field,” added Great Learning’s Nair.

Upskilling during macro headwinds

The escalating demand for such courses come at a time when employee addition at Indian unicorns fell to a fifth in the first half of 2023 from the year-ago period as growth took a backseat and companies focused on cutting costs amidst a worsening fund scarcity.

Meanwhile, four out of five of India’s top five Information Technology companies have also reported a fall in headcount in the first quarter of FY24.

Moneycontrol had earlier reported that Indian unicorns – startups valued at $1 billion or more – added a net 5,000 employees in the first six months of 2023, over 83 percent lower than the six-month average of 30,000 in 2022.

upGrad’s Kumar said that during economic downturns, higher education or skilling programmes tend to see an uptick.

“This was evident during the tech bubble burst during 2000

-2002 and also during the financial crisis in 2008-09, where MBA and higher education enrolments had increased,” he added.

Top Free GenAI courses

Krishna Kumar, founder and CEO of Simplilearn, agrees and said that the use of GenAI by professionals has proven to be instrumental in data augmentation, content creation, language translation, and much more. “It is maximising productivity across business verticals, and as a result, recruiters are increasingly seeking candidates with hands-on experience in this field,” said Kumar.

Moneycontrol recently reported that amidst debates about artificial intelligence (AI) replacing jobs, Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) major Zoho's co-founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu said that AI will only replace roles, not employees.

Experts believe that employees should, hence, upskill themselves to stay relevant for newer roles that would be created with growing incorporation of GenAI in businesses.

“Young professionals and students are recognising that upskilling themselves doesn’t only help them get a job with a competitive salary but also makes them future-proof in terms of employability, given the volatile job market and uncertain economic conditions,” said Coding Ninja’s Singla.