Chennai:NIIT Limited, a global leader in skills and talent development,today unveiled a first-of-its-kind programme to address the versatile talent requirements of the fast growing start-up sector -StackRouteTM, an NIIT initiative to produce the world’s best full stack programmers.StackRouteTMaims to create multi-skilled, and multi-disciplinary programmers who can become key members of high-performance teams in top notch product engineering companies, start-ups, and IT firms. These ‘Super Programmers’ will also be well equipped to create their own technology start-ups.

Over the recent past, the start-up space in India has witnessed phenomenal growth and has drawn support from the government and industry for their efforts towards ushering innovation and job creation. Addressing the nation on the 69th Independence day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a new campaign “Start-up India, Stand up India”which would promote bank financing for start-ups and offer incentives to boost entrepreneurship and job creation. This was followed by announcement of Rs. 2000 Cr fund for start-ups. Earlier this year apex body for the IT industry NASSCOM announced an ambitious initiative called 10,000 Start-ups, to scale up the start-up ecosystem in India.

This revolution in the start-up space has led to massive talent crunch. According to a Manpower report 58 per cent of Indian employers are finding it difficult to fill positions and there is a significant talent shortage of talent in the IT and accounting space. The demand for versatile roles in IT is expected go up further, says Manpower.  Also close to 67 per cent Indian start-ups reported difficulty in filling job vacancies versus a global average of 34 per cent.

As an organization, NIIT has played a pioneering role in making the right skill-sets available for the industry, over the last 34 years.To this effect, in the past couple of years specific niche offerings focused on Social, Mobile, Cloud and Analytics domains have been rolled out.

The kind of software engineers needed by the start-up sector, are significantly different from what large IT services firms needed in the past for their huge software factories. Engineers need to be versatile and have fullstack programming skills and NIIT has taken a step forward to provide the same.The launch of StackRouteTMis a key ingredient ofthe business transformation program at NIIT that is set to enter the ‘next frontier’ of growth by offering quality Career Skills Training to offer job-ready talent to the Indian industry across multiple industry sectors.

StackRouteTM is a truly high end, specialised programme offering, that will take a very select group of students and turn them into high performance full stack programmers that the industry needs urgently. The product has been developed in intense consultation with the industry, start-ups, product engineering companies and incubators, and is strongly endorsed by all the key industry stakeholders.

The pilot program is being launched in Bangalore in Koramangala, which has already become India’s most concentrated start-up hub. The initial pilot focuses on the JavaScript and NoSQL stack, and will be followed by a series of further specialised full stack programs focused on data sciences & analytics; IT security; etc. These full-stack programs over the near future, will be made available to key product engineering and start-up hubs in India, hence becoming a significant part of NIIT’s IT product portfolio.

Speaking on this significant launch, Mr. Rahul Patwardhan, CEO, NIIT Ltd. said, “With innovation as our central DNA, we have been designing new-age career programmes to meet the changing manpower needs of the industry over the last 34 years. The economy has changed and so has the requirements of the industry and the aspirations of the youth. Industry today, especially the booming start-up sector, is looking at versatile professionals who can wear many hats. Technology has become a great enabler hence the need of the hour are young professionals who can work on multiple technology platforms.”

“At the same time,today’s youthare looking for challenging roles that will enable them to work closely with the decision makers. There is also a growing hunger for setting up enterprises and lot of innovation is happening in the technology space.StackRouteTM- first of its kind initiative to create full stack programmers has been designed to match these aspirations,” added Mr. Patwardhan.

StackRouteTM, an NIIT initiative has been designed with the sole intent of teaching people to be top-class programmers.  On offer are intensive boot camp styled courses with a model of apprenticeship where practitioners lead novices towards expertise.  Graduates and engineering graduates who aspire to become Full-Stack Programmers can join this programme. Admission will be very selective.

The first batch starts on October 1, 2015 in Bangalore. Interested students can visit www.stackroute.in for further details.

StackRouteTM is based on an extremely experiential learning model. Over a 12-week intensive boot camp, the students are immersed in a work environment that is exactly like that of a product company. They are mentored by a team of senior architects and tech leads drawn from the industry. By the end of the program, students produce real products over this time frame, which are then released as Open Source contributions or as part of App Stores and become primary demonstrators of our their competencies. Innovative pedagogical methodologies and the use of intensive learning analytics are other unique features of this first-of-its-kind intensive programs in India.

StackRouteTM, enables people to become top-quality programmers by providing intensive boot camps based on 5 key principles:

1.       Learning is an Immersive Experience: the environment in StackRouteTM is that of a product engineering company with rigorous engineering discipline and Agile development. Students are steeped in this environment in intensive boot camps. When they graduate, engineering discipline is second nature for them.

2.       Less Theory, More Practice: The pedagogic model reserves over 70% of time within any course to designing, writing, reviewing code.  Class-room style instruction occupies less than 20% of the course.

3.       Learn from Industry Experts: StackRouteTM courses are designed by industry experts. It has a unique model of practitioners working with small groups of students.

4.       Build and Release a Real Product: Every graduate of StackRouteTMbuilds at least one real product, some of these are Open Source contributions, others are sponsored by the industry. The primary demonstrator of competency is showcasing the product.

5.       Completeness and Practical Engineering: At StackRouteTM focus is on quality engineering, DevOps and testing – without these capabilities, students cannot be top quality programmers. The curriculum lays equal emphasis on developing critical thinking skills, making people experience real-world reviews and developing their problem solving skills.

The courses are designed and lead by industry gurus who have built and taken liveultra-large scale systems. The focus would be on product engineering where students can build and release products in an environment that has the best engineering practices. Each program will be run by a CTO and a set of product leads who will work with student teams to provide the product vision and strategy,architecture and design inputs, the tips and tricks that result in efficiency.