India’s largest non-public monetary companies group HDFC, Reliance Industries Ltd and British power conglomerate Shell are among the many world’s high 75 corporations by market worth which are more and more enlisting consultants with deep AI data to coach their staff. Surging demand for his or her expertise permits creators and consultants like Mehra to safe as much as ₹25 lakh in a couple of weeks.
Mehra has been working his AI coaching enterprise, The Slicing Edge Faculty, for the previous three years. He’s presently conducting a workshop for over 1,000 staff for a high retail agency–he refused to determine the shopper, citing a non-disclosure settlement.
“Most firms that come to us have three key issues that they need solved: one, their staff are nonetheless utilizing outdated instruments for capabilities equivalent to advertising and marketing, content material creation and outreach; two, most of them will not be utilizing AI the way in which it must be; and three, giving the correct prompts to make sure that privateness and safety of people is maintained,” Mehra mentioned.
Demand for AI upskilling has exploded globally because the expertise turns into a part of company workflow throughout sectors. India, too, will want greater than 1 million expert AI staff throughout the subsequent 12 months to maintain up with the tempo of AI adoption by firms and for the nation to realize its goal of producing $35 billion of home product by 2047, a report by the ministry of electronics and data expertise (Meity) mentioned earlier this month.
AI instruments to technique
Most often, trainers are recognized due to their social media content material or CXO references based mostly on years of expertise in AI. Programs provided price ₹6-25 lakh for programs working for 4 to 6 weeks, and the variety of collaborating staff can go as excessive as 1,000. These programs principally cowl primers on the basics of AI, and hands-on guides on the right way to benefit from well-liked instruments equivalent to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Adobe’s Firefly, and extra.
Corporations are individually upskilling particular person leaders to realize a deeper understanding of AI coverage, classes from lawsuits all over the world, and techniques for the way the expertise can both add worth or scale back prices. These programs usually price ₹5,000-25,000 per particular person per week.
Mehra’s programs usually run for 4 weeks, and his 25-member group conducts 12 of them in a yr—however goals to do extra as demand ramps up.
“There may be deep demand from firms for AI upskilling, and this demand is unlikely to die down,” mentioned Kashyap Kompella, a veteran AI marketing consultant. “The programs vary from providing an introduction into the number of AI instruments accessible for varied duties, understanding their limitations and scope, the ethics and legality of it, and their applicability throughout the board—be it knowledge analytics or for content material era.”
Kompella is conducting a six-week immersive AI coaching programme for greater than 5,000 staff of a high Indian monetary companies agency.
“When utilized by succesful people, AI can considerably improve each private and group productiveness,” he mentioned. “Nonetheless, its affect relies upon closely on how nicely customers can collaborate with the expertise. Corporations are waking as much as this in the present day, and that’s resulting in heavy demand from conglomerates.”
Shell cited its silent interval in response to Mint’s question, however acknowledged that the corporate is working with exterior consultants for AI upskilling throughout capabilities. HDFC Mutual Fund, Reliance Retail and Nestle didn’t reply to emailed queries.
Mid-career demand
Sridev Ramesh, 29, who cofounded AI developer and engineering content material platform 100xEngineers, presents programs to mid-career company professionals eager to find out how finest to make use of well-liked AI instruments to reinforce current work in professions equivalent to digital advertising and marketing, content material era and extra.
“The most important takers for our AI upskilling programs are aged 30-35, and are mid-career company professionals from throughout domains who’re both making an attempt to compensate for AI expertise, or achieve a deeper understanding of the way it can have an effect on their work,” he mentioned. “We simply started our fifth cohort—which has about 200 takers. Whereas college students pay about ₹1.1 lakh for this six-month online-only course, working professionals are charged as much as ₹1.4 lakh for it.”
Whereas Ramesh, who holds a distance studying diploma in astrophysics engineering from The Open College, UK, has provided customized AI upskilling programmes to firms, he prefers the open registration route the place his programs will not be tied to any explicit agency.
“We provided an inside upskilling course for utilizing AI for digital advertising and marketing use instances at Netflix. However, most firms want a personalized programme for a set variety of staff—we choose to supply our personal course, and there’s a large demand for them at our finish,” mentioned Ramesh. “We presently restrict registrations at as much as 200 candidates per cohort as a result of that’s our bandwidth—all of the coaching is offered by my cofounder and I.”
Queries emailed by Mint to Netflix remained unanswered until press time.
Varun Mayya, 32, gives content material and advertising and marketing programs by way of his company Aeos Media. Previously yr, the agency has provided AI video creation coaching and consultancy companies to Godrej Properties, Amazon Prime Video and two main media conglomerates, amongst others, he mentioned.
Godrej Properties and Amazon have but to reply to Mint’s emailed queries.
“Our multi-week AI coaching programmes can prolong as much as ₹15 lakh for an inside company session, relying on the variety of attendees and what’s anticipated from us,” Mayya mentioned. “We solely stick with our space of experience in AI coaching—AI content material era and advertising and marketing.”
Creators and consultants say the demand for AI upskilling is right here to remain. “We’re solely simply discovering AI, and the sphere itself is actively evolving. Going ahead, demand for schooling is definite to maintain for lengthy—and people making the early strikes can both delve deeper to supply better experience and certification in the long term,” mentioned 100xEngineers’ Ramesh.
In line with Kompella, CXOs “are solely starting to comprehend that understanding AI is crucial, and it’s higher performed ahead of later”.
Floor-level coaching
There may be, nonetheless, some scepticism. Jibu Elias, India head for accountable computing at Mozilla, mentioned the generative AI hype is driving company leaders to AI coaching and plenty of programs largely skim the “floor stage utilization of business instruments”.
“Tech firms even have vested pursuits in getting future customers familiarised with their ecosystems early on—we’ve seen this playbook earlier than,” mentioned Elias. “However, what we’re more likely to see going ahead is a shift from primary tool-training towards deeper schooling in context-specific AI reasoning, moral judgment, and system integration. The position of the AI coach isn’t disappearing, however it might want to evolve simply as quick because the instruments themselves.”
Mehra of The Slicing Edge Faculty, nonetheless, doesn’t anticipate demand for company AI trainers to chill anytime quickly.
“In most of our coaching programs, we see that established company staff are nonetheless sketchy on the very best methods to make use of AI,” he mentioned. “So long as the sphere of AI retains evolving, these on the cutting-edge of the expertise will all the time discover demand from bigger firms, searching for assist with upskilling their workforce.”
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