Scaler, a leading Bengaluru-based edtech start-up for upskilling students and working professionals, today announced the release of KPMG commissioned “Scaler Placement Assessment Report”, capturing the impact of upskilling on the Indian IT Ecosystem. The report revealed that the Indian software engineers are witnessing tremendous career growth and finding meaningful employment opportunities after undertaking upskilling courses like Scaler.
The rate of employability of Indian engineers has not been promising for more than a decade now, with a report by Aspiring Minds suggesting that nearly 97% of Indian graduates are unemployable. The report further highlights the status of skillsets among engineers, with only 3% of the graduates adept in handling new-age skills in areas such as AI, Machine Learning, Data Engineering and Mobile technologies. The latest Scaler Hiring Trends Report also indicates that 67% of tech recruiters in India are now choosing skills over degrees. Learners across demography are now recognizing the importance of tech upskilling platforms.
Scaler is a 9-11 month online, but immersive program learners take up along with their current jobs. Learners can choose to learn and build a career in either software engineering or data science. Inside Scaler, they go through live classes from industry experts, solve assignments with the help of teaching assistants and get personal mentorship from experts in the industry.
Over the last 3 years, professionals after upskilling (through Scaler programs) have witnessed over a 126% increase in their salaries across 2087 graduates. Scaler learners have witnessed a mean salary of 21.6 LPA, a median salary of 17.5 LPA and a placement rate of 93.5%. The highest domestic salary achieved by Scaler learners’ stands at 3.03 Crores. The average salary for learners who had 6-10 years of work experience is 31.9L INR, while learners with more than 10 years of experience received packages averaging at 57.1L INR.
The KPMG assessment report also surveyed learners on their post-placement performance in the companies they joined. The average hike in salaries received after joining the new company stands at 67.8%, with 31.8% of alumni being promoted in the job they joined post Scaler. In comparison, the average hike percentage across IT jobs in 2021 was 11.2% (according to the Salary Increase Survey by global professional services firm Aon).
Anshuman Singh, Co-founder, Scaler and InterviewBit, “All career outcomes have a very high correlation to their adherence to the program. The program is very intensive and requires a lot of hard work. Getting into reputed product-based companies is no easy task. It needs techies to stay updated with the tech trends in the market, explore them, and thoroughly understand them. This is specifically hard because all of our learners do it with an existing job. I admire their commitment, and I am sure they will create a significant impact wherever they go.”
The KPMG Scaler report highlighted the majorly impacted industries with this boom in upskilling and they were Technology Solutions with an intake of 14.1% professionals, Financial Technologies with 13.9%, E-Commerce & Retail with 13.7% and Consumer Tech, which witnessed employment of 8.2% of upskilled professionals. Scaler also listed the top 25 employers for upskilled professionals across India, with Amazon, Microsoft and Delhivery in the top 3.
Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-founder, Scaler and InterviewBit, said – “With the edtech players recognising this skill gap in the sector, the tech upskilling on offer today has been providing a second lease of life to Indian techies who aspire to work at product-based companies. Our skilling programs for software engineers, lasting for merely a year or less, have made a considerable difference to the tech organisations. We have successfully devised a skilling ecosystem that understands the needs of the tech players and created programs that learners can undertake part-time, along with their pursuing jobs. Scaler has been one of the most empowering tools for engineers who aspire to dream big in this industry.”
“Scaler has played a pivotal role in my professional journey. I have always dreamt of working at a product based company. I took a leap of faith and joined Scaler in May 2019. I worked really hard for 10-11 months along with my job. I would be up at night listening to lectures, solving problems, and giving mock interviews. Not only that, I became more curious about technology and also met a lot of like-minded people who were in the same boat as me. After months of hard work, I got placed in Credit Suisse and then moved to Mindtickle. What I learned from the Scaler team has still stayed with me—especially Abhimanyu, who is more of a friend than faculty. I feel proud to be a part of Scaler.” – Yash Sarda, Scaler Alumni.
Today, e-learning is largely identified with MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platforms that see a completion rate of less than 4%, as quoted by a report from ‘Inside Higher Ed’. Career outcomes based on this learning are rarely measured. In the post COVID world, cohort-based courses such as Scaler are gaining popularity, and they have been able to show significantly higher completion rates and career outcomes. In comparison, average salaries at IITs range from 8L to 25L per annum. Note that IITs have a wider intake and teach more engineering courses than just Computer Science or Data Science.
With over 1200+ employees, another 1000 mentors + teaching assistants, and a learner base of more than 15,000 software engineers, the platform is aggressively working towards bridging the tech talent gap in India. Scaler has also recently raised Series B funding of 55 million USD from Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global, and Lightrock India. The young edtech brand is currently valued at USD 710 million.