Bengaluru, ABB India on Monday announced a partnership with Nasscom to develop standardised qualification criterion for two IoT-related job roles -- IoT network communications and IoT cybersecurity.

The Qualification Packs (QPs) define the competency standards that will provide a framework for academic institutions to design their course curriculum to better conform to industry hiring standards for these highly-skilled jobs.

"The need of the hour for the industry is a specialized set of skills beyond the traditional course curriculum, as also demonstrated by the current COVID-19 situation where virtual/digital has become integral to operations in most companies," said Rajarshi Banerjee, Head of ABB Ability Customer Experience and Innovation-AMEA.

The standardised format will help the industry develop a quality pool to help companies across sectors.

The qualification packs for the two job roles have been approved by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), National Skill Development Agency (NSDA), and National Skills Qualifications Committee (NSQC).

According to Nasscom estimates, nearly 40 per cent of the country's workforce needs to be reskilled if they are to work in Artificial Intelligence (AI), IoT, Machine Learning (ML) and Blockchain spaces.

"We are certain that this initiative will benefit the sector as a whole and help us in our journey to further consolidate India as a talent hub for new-age technologies," said Amit Aggarwal, CEO, IT-ITES Sector Skills Council, Nasscom.

The IT industry's apex body has been at the forefront of an industry-driven effort in India to develop 'Future Skills Competency Standards' that define the skills required to do jobs in technologies like IoT, AI, Big Data Analytics (BDA),