The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Wednesday approved the expansion of the 'Future Skills' initiative to industry professionals across different segments, higher education students and government officials, with a goal to train four lakh professionals in the next three years.

The government would invest Rs 436 crore over a period of three years on this initiative.

The expanded digital platform would be called Future Skills PRIME (Programme for Reskilling/Upskilling of IT Manpower for Employability), said a statement from NASSCOM, which is a partner of the government for the initiative.

Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "In the digital world, trained workforce will become India's biggest competitive advantage. The government is committed to work with the IT Industry and NASSCOM to create India Digital Talent Stack that will propel India into a leadership position in the digital world."

Speaking on the occasion, Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, said: "It is phenomenal to see the government taking on such a huge initiative and recognising the imperative of skilling in our industry today. The common objective we share is to showcase India as the global hub for talent development in emerging technologies as well as globally recognised process structures."

In the last phase of the initiative, two lakh IT employees were trained, and now its ambit will expand beyond IT professionals to others keen to upskill themselves in areas like AI, cyber security and blockchain.