– By Shubhodeb Bhattacharya
In 2020, during the fifth semester of her BCA programme at a government college in Telangana’s Rangareddy district, Ayesha Samereen reached an uncomfortable conclusion: a degree alone would not get her a job. The daughter of a driver, she had earned a free seat on merit because a private college was beyond her family’s means.
She enrolled in a placement-focused skilling course run at her college. Out of 86 students in her batch, she was selected for a role before completing her final semester. What began as an accounting course has since grown into a career as a software developer, building applications.
The challenge she faced has only sharpened since. As AI reshapes entry-level work, employers are looking past qualifications, and even past familiarity with AI tools, towards something harder to certify: the judgement to use those tools well and the capacity to keep learning as they change.
This blog examines the AI skills employers want in India, why no single institution can build them alone and how skilling partnerships between government, industry, educational institutions, social organisations and donors can close this gap.
The AI skills employers want from India’s freshers
So what does that judgement involve? Global employer surveys, including the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, rank AI and big data among the fastest-growing skills, while placing analytical thinking at the top of the core skills employers seek.
For entry-level hiring in India, that combination translates into the five practical capabilities described below:
- Verification and judgement: Recognising when an AI output is inaccurate, incomplete or inappropriate, and checking it against a reliable source
- Clear problem framing: Instructing an AI tool well is an exercise in communication, requiring a defined task, context and expected result
- Responsible data handling: Understanding what information should not be shared with external tools and why
- Adaptability: Learning new tools quickly as workflows change, rather than depending on a single platform
- Human skills that AI amplifies: Empathy, collaboration and the ability to explain a decision, all of which grow in value as routine tasks are automated
Taken together, these are better described as 21st-century skills than as narrowly technical ones. They overlap closely with what recruiters already call employability skills, which is why AI readiness is difficult to demonstrate through a certificate alone.
Why no single actor can close the gap
If a certificate cannot prove these skills, they have to be built before a young person applies for a job. A hiring process can spot who lacks them, but it cannot develop them, and by the interview stage the time to build them has largely passed.
Building these skills also takes more than one institution, because each one controls only part of a young person’s journey into work:
- Employers know what the job needs, but they do not run classrooms
- Government shapes the education system and funds programmes, but it needs employers’ input to keep them relevant
- Colleges and training institutions run classrooms, but they do not always know what employers need
- Community organisations can reach young people from low-income and first-generation families, but they need links to employers to turn training into jobs
- Donors fund training for the young people who are hardest to reach, but they rely on the other partners to turn that funding into effective youth skilling routes
When any one of these works alone, a gap appears somewhere along that journey.
This is why youth skilling partnerships matter. In a partnership, each group agrees on what it will contribute, and all of them work towards the same goal: young people who are ready for work and go on to find jobs. The next section looks at each partner’s role in turn.
What each partner holds in a youth skilling partnership
A well-structured public private partnership in skilling gives each participant a defined role.
Five groups carry the most weight:
Corporates
Employers hold the clearest view of what entry-level roles demand. They can define hiring criteria, share how AI is changing daily tasks, review curricula and open internship and recruitment pathways.
Government and policymakers
Public bodies can integrate AI literacy into existing education and skilling systems, set assessment standards that recognise judgement and responsible use rather than tool familiarity alone, and extend programmes to semi-urban and rural areas that private initiatives rarely reach at scale.
Educational institutions
Schools, colleges and polytechnics, particularly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, are where most young people first encounter structured learning. Embedding AI literacy across disciplines rather than as a standalone module and equipping faculty to teach through practice are the changes with the widest reach.
Social organisations
NGOs and community institutions provide what formal systems often lack: trust and access. They reach first-generation learners, address family hesitation about training, and sustain engagement through to employment.
Donors
Foundations, CSR funders and individual donors make it possible to reach learners the market alone rarely serves: first-generation learners, women entering work for the first time, differently-abled youth, and students in non-metro schools and colleges. Beyond funding, they help set measurable outcomes and stay engaged through reporting and site visits.
What building judgement looks like in a classroom
All five partners matter, but the skills themselves take shape in one place: the classroom, where these partnerships finally reach the learner. Judgement is built there through practice rather than instruction. In classrooms designed for this, the facilitator presents a real workplace problem, learners work through it with peers and AI tools, and the facilitator then steps back so learners reach and defend their own answers. Learners are expected to test every AI response against evidence, and mock interviews and workplace visits then help them carry that judgement into their first job.
This is what every day looks like at the skilling centres of Anudip Foundation. Since 2007, that work has added up to:
- 7,30,000+ young people trained, over half of them women
- 90+ training centres across 22 Indian states
- 400+ recruitment partners
- A 70% placement rate, with over 100 job drives held
each year
By building learning agility, Anudip prepares learners for today’s jobs and for those still to come.
Behind those numbers are journeys like Ayesha’s. She joined the skilling course on her college campus in 2020 with a degree in progress but no clear route to a job. The biggest change, she says, was in how she saw herself: the training taught her “to see myself as employable.” That confidence has since grown into the learning agility described above: years on, she still upskills roughly every six months because, as she puts it, “standing still is its own kind of quitting.”
From one learner to a pipeline
That is exactly the journey Ayesha has made. Today, she works as a developer at a multinational IT company. A government college gave her a seat on merit, a skilling program delivered on that campus built her readiness and an employer recognised it.
Her story is one example; repeating it for thousands of young people depends on these contributions being coordinated rather than left to chance. Anudip Foundation formalises this through alliances with corporates, government bodies, educational institutions and social organisations, built around curricula co-designed with employers, defined agreements, delivery and outcome tracking.
Employers seeking entry-level candidates prepared to work alongside AI can find candidate pools and hiring formats on the recruiters page. Donors can find the causes this work supports and how funded projects are structured on the donors page.
The question for India’s skilling ecosystem is no longer whether freshers need AI skills. It is whether the institutions that shape them will build those skills together and early enough to matter.
Build the future-ready workforce with us
Ayesha’s journey took more than one partner, and so will the next young person’s. Tell us where you fit, and our team will help you take the first step together.
Frequently asked questions
1. What AI skills do employers want in India from freshers?
Beyond basic familiarity with AI tools, employers look for the ability to verify AI outputs, frame problems clearly, handle data responsibly, adapt to new tools, and apply human skills such as communication and collaboration.
2. Do freshers need to know coding to be AI-ready?
Not for most entry-level roles. Many positions in customer service, operations and business support require the judgement to use AI tools well rather than the ability to build them. Technical roles will, of course, expect programming knowledge in addition.
3. What is a public private partnership in skilling?
It is a structured collaboration in which government bodies, private employers and often educational institutions, community organisations and donors share responsibility for training young people and connecting them to employment, with each partner contributing defined resources or roles.
4. How can employers take part in youth skilling in India?
Employers can share role requirements, contribute to curriculum review, offer internships or industry visits, participate in placement drives, and provide feedback on how new hires perform.
5. How can donors support youth skilling in India?
Donors can fund programmes for groups the job market rarely reaches on its own, such as first-generation learners, women from marginalised communities, differently-abled youth and students in non-metro institutions. They can then stay engaged through agreed milestones, regular reporting and site visits.
6. Why are 21st-century skills important for employability?
As AI takes on routine tasks, the work left to people relies more heavily on critical thinking, adaptability, communication and problem-solving. These skills determine how well a new employee can learn, adjust and contribute as their role changes.
