AI skills gap: Imarticus, IIT Kanpur launch courses
Imarticus Learning has launched Future Skills for Bharat, a portfolio of AI skills certificate programmes for undergraduate students in India, offered in association with E&ICT Academy, IIT Kanpur — part of the EICTA Consortium under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The portfolio opens with two programmes, AI Engineering & Infrastructure and AI for Finance, with EV Technology and FinTech & Digital Finance to follow.
Each programme runs 60 hours over two months in a live format, combining structured modules, four IIT/NIT faculty masterclasses and three guided projects. Learners who meet the requirements receive a programme completion certificate under the E&ICT Academy, IIT Kanpur.
The AI skills gap it addresses
The premise is well founded: the AI skills gap is real. India’s employers are struggling to hire AI-ready talent, and the evidence is unusually consistent. The India Skills Report 2026 puts the country’s employability rate at about 56.35%, and a ManpowerGroup survey found more than 82% of Indian employers cannot find candidates with the required skills — with AI skills, for the first time, the hardest to find globally.
The sharper problem is a gap between confidence and capability. A Scaler–CyberMedia Research study found that 89% of engineers believe they are AI-ready, but only 19% are actually building AI/ML systems, and 86% of recruiters report difficulty finding genuinely AI-skilled candidates. Quess’s AI-talent research found the widest deficits in GenAI deployment, AI deployment engineering and AI governance. India produces engineering graduates at scale; it does not yet produce enough who can operate the systems.
Future Skills for Bharat is aimed at the AI skills gap, and its design reflects it. The programmes lean on projects rather than theory alone: a learner might deploy an AI model as a working service, build an AI finance assistant grounded in a company annual report, design a battery pack for an Indian electric bus, or build a UPI transaction dashboard. That emphasis on demonstrable work matches a finding from NIIT’s 2026 skills-gap report — that employers now trust “proof more than paper,” weighing portfolios and applied projects over credentials alone.
The credential, plainly
The release is unusually candid about what the programmes are and are not. “Learners who meet the programme requirements will receive a programme completion certificate under the E&ICT Academy, IIT Kanpur,” it states. “The programmes do not confer an IIT degree, diploma or alumni status.”
That candour matters, because the E&ICT Academy branding is the portfolio’s most prominent signal. The academy is real and government-backed: established at IIT Kanpur in 2016 in partnership with MeitY, it is part of the EICTA consortium, a joint MeitY and IIT/NIT/IIIT initiative. But EICTA’s own published terms are explicit on two points worth reading before enrolling: its certificates “do not entitle the learner to claim alumni status of IIT Kanpur,” and “all commitments regarding internships, projects, or placements are solely the responsibility of the respective delivery partner,” with the consortium neither liable nor responsible for them. In this case the delivery partner is Imarticus.
So the honest reading is that the academy provides academic association and the certificate branding; Imarticus provides the delivery and any career support. That is a common and legitimate structure, but it is worth stating plainly, because the strongest claims a prospective student might infer — an IIT credential, or guaranteed placement help — are not what the terms describe.
There is also the matter of scale. Sixty hours over two months is a short intervention. Against the structural AI skills gap that researchers describe as a “progression failure” rather than a simple skills shortage, a two-month certificate is unlikely to close it on its own. Imarticus’s own framing acknowledges this: its chief executive, Nikhil Barshikar, describes the aim as putting students inside “the systems, constraints and trade-offs” they will face, rather than issuing “another certificate.” The projects are the substance of that claim; the certificate is the artefact.
What it does and doesn’t establish
It establishes a new, project-led certificate portfolio for undergraduates, backed by a genuine MeitY-linked academy, addressing the well-documented AI skills gap. It does not establish a fee, a cohort size, enrolment numbers, placement outcomes or salary impact — none of which was disclosed.
The honest summary is that Imarticus and the E&ICT Academy have put together a short, project-heavy answer to a real problem, and framed the credential honestly. The AI skills gap is genuine and large; the question for a student is whether 60 hours of live learning and three guided projects move them materially closer to the “proof over paper” that employers now say they want. That is a reasonable bet, but it is a bet, not a guarantee — and the academy’s terms are clear that the guarantee is not theirs to give.
Editor’s Note: This article draws on the Imarticus Learning release, the EICTA consortium and E&ICT Academy documentation, the India Skills Report 2026, ManpowerGroup’s 2026 Talent Shortage Survey, Scaler–CMR and Quess AI-talent research, and NIIT’s 2026 skills-gap report. The programme’s format and credential are as by Imarticus; no fee, cohort or outcome data was there. No interview.