Panasonic Launches Education Solutions to Bridge Skill Gap Between Academia and Industry in India

New Delhi/Bengaluru, India - January 28, 2020 - Addressing the growing need to upskill students to create a future-ready workforce, Panasonic India - a diversified technology company, announced the launch of its two education based solutions: "CareerEx" and "XcelIT".

CareerEx has been designed to address the needs of college and university students to advance their skillset with emerging technologies such Data Science, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning/AI and Internet of Things to name a few. XcelIT on the other hand is designed for school students primarily residing in Tier II & III cities, to ready them for all competitive exams. Designed and developed at Panasonic's India Innovation Centre (IIC), the solutions were launched for the institutes in presence of Mr. Anil Sahasrabudhe - Chairman, AICTE, Mr. M.P. Poonia - Vice Chairman, AICTE and Dr. Antriksh Johri - Director, CBSE at Vigyan Bhawan. The event was well attended by deans and chairpersons of over 75 leading universities and institutes in India.

Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy's (CMIE) recent data further validates that the unemployment rate in the urban youth is very high; in the age group of 20-24 years, an unemployment rate of 37 per cent was reported whilst graduates amongst them reported an alarmingly higher unemployment rate of over 60 per cent. Keeping that in mind these educational solutions have been designed and developed at Panasonic's India Innovation Centre (IIC). These solutions have been developed for the students, colleges and universities, to bridge the existing skill gap between current education and employment needs for the future.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Atsushi Motoya, Head - Panasonic India Innovation Centre said, "We are committed towards contributing to the evolution of the communities we operate in. In India, we have already introduced innovative solutions in health care, retail, enterprise and asset tracking across industries. Through the launch of CareerEx and XcelIT, we hope to develop another innovative Edu-tech solution to upskill technology talent pool to address the unemployment rate amongst urban youth and at the same time cater to the demands of industry. We are looking to positively impact nearly 100,000 students over next 5 years."

Mr Pankaj Rana, Business Chief, Sanyo and ecommerce, Panasonic India - said, "India is rapidly moving towards becoming a digitally advanced country and we are witnessing a significant change in the way businesses are transforming. Bridging the required skill gap and building a future workforce ready for the next phase of technology disruption, is the need of the hour. With this objective, we at Panasonic are focusing on the grassroots level and we will continue working with student communities across India to keep them informed of the emerging technologies, enhance skill-sets and provide career guidance".

Panasonic's educational solutions CareerEx and XcelIT are available on both Android and iOS application stores. Priced competitively, depending on the type of program, CareerX courses start at Rs 9999 per month onwards while, XcelIT starts at Rs 999 per month however, students can avail individual tests at Rs 99 too. Panasonic has collaborated with specialised educational partners to provide expertise for this program. While students can look at increasing their employability, educational institutions can enable students with on-demand job skills and thus, improve their rankings and the industry can save on fresher recruitment and training costs.

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