Celonis Academic Alliance and Academy recognized by nasscom for training India’s next generation of process professionals

“Winning the Nasscom Digital Skills Award was a true team effort,” said Anitha Scaria George, VP India CoE and country leader for Celonis. “When Celonis launched in India, we set a goal to train 100,000 students on process mining within 3 years. Thanks to our Celonauts, our Academic Alliance partners and support from the Indian government, we did it in just 2.”

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Anitha Scaria George, VP India CoE and country leader, Celonis, (center) accepts the Nasscom Digital Skills Award 2023 at NASTech 2023 from Sangeeta Gupta, SVP, nasscom (left) and Pramod Idiculla, Head, Design and Content at nasscom FutureSkills (right).

Nasscom Digital Skills Award 2023

Nasscom is a not-for-profit industry association located in India that focuses on developing the country’s technology sector. Established in 1988, the association reports over 3,200 members across a wide range of business areas including IT services, business process management (BPM), product and engineering/R&D. From small startups to large enterprises, nasscom represents its members’ interests through policy advocacy and strategic planning for India’s tech industry. It also provides “industry research, networking opportunities and skill development initiatives.”

In 2023, nasscom launched the Digital Skills Awards to recognize organizations that promote the growth of India’s technology talent pool through digital learning and skill building initiatives. Beginning in July and continuing through the middle of August, organizations could submit case studies outlining their digital skilling initiatives, in the following categories:

• Social Changemakers
• Innovation Ignitor
• Academic Partnership Pioneer
• Digital Fluency Catalyst
• Deep Skills Disrupter

Applications could submit entries in multiple categories, but were limited to three case studies per category. The awards were open to nasscom members and non-members, so long as they were registered in India, had a Global Capability Center (GCC) in India, were a multinational corporation with an office in India or were a start-up, SME (small and medium enterprise) or MSME (micro small and medium enterprise).

Celonis Academic Alliance in India

Founded in 2016, the Celonis Academic Alliance is a global community of academic institutions, educators, learners, researchers and process mining practitioners. The Academic Alliance consists of 700+ universities, colleges and schools across 50 countries and serves more than 3,000 classrooms and over 330,000 academic users of the Celonis platform.

Read: The Celonis Academic Alliance: Building Bridges with Education

“The Academic Alliance Program in India works closely with universities and academic institutions to integrate Celonis into their curricula,” said Manjunath Chandrashekar, lead partner manager for Academic Alliance at Celonis. “This includes offering academic licenses and resources to educators, organizing train-the-trainer sessions and providing technical support.”

Manjunath also told me that the Academic Alliance partners with several government bodies like All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Telangana Academy of Skills and Knowledge (TASK) and Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation (TNSDC) to offer certification opportunities through the curriculum.

“By partnering with a variety of institutions, the Academic Alliance gives students access to the latest process mining technology and helps them develop practical skills in using the Celonis platform,” he added.

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Moments from guest lectures, student workshops, webinars and government partnership events showcasing the Celonis Academic Alliance in India

The Celonis India team highlighted these offerings and their accomplishments in the case study submitted for the Digital Skills Award 2023. Specifically, they cited achievements in the following areas:

• Partnership with academic institutions: Celonis partners with over 200 institutions in India, including Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology, Dayanand Sagar College of Engineering, JECRC University, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, IIM Lucknow, and S P Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR).
• Curriculum development: The Academic Alliance worked with several institutions to make process mining courses part of their curriculum, including The Symbiosis Center for Information Technology in India.
• Student competitions: The Alliance sponsored and co-organized a Learn-A-Thon on process mining with ICT Academy.
• Research collaboration: In partnership with the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, the Academic Alliance submitted research papers on “Data-Driven Optimization with Business Process Mining” at the 17th conference on Learning and Intelligent Optimization (LION17).
• Community building: Organising Faculty Development Programs, Industry Institute Interactions, Student Workshops, Industry Talks and many more on Process Mining.
• Celonis Global Internship Program: Through the Academic Alliance program, Celonis has trained graduate hires at companies including Wipro and Tech Mahindra in India.

Another key component of Celonis’ education efforts highlighted in the case study was the Celonis Rising Stars Program, a collaboration between the Celonis Academic Alliance and Celonis Academy. The Rising Stars Program is a training program designed to help university and college students learn the skills and knowledge necessary for a career in process mining. It consists of individual courses and training tracks assembled into different pathways:

• Rising Stars Business Pathway: tailored towards Process Analysts and Business Process Specialists
• Rising Stars Technical Pathway: tailored towards Data Engineers or Process Analysts
• Rising Stars Automation Pathway: tailored towards Process Analysts and Business Process Specialists
• Rising Stars Research Pathway: tailored towards academic careers or any of the above wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the theory behind the technology
• Rising Stars Consultant Bootcamp: tailored towards consultants and project-based business users

“Process Mining is one of the fastest-growing job markets in the data science industry and the demand for skilled talent is higher than ever before,” said Jerome Geyer-Klingeberg, global head of Academic Alliance for Celonis, in an article about the program’s launch. “If you are keen on starting your career in Process Mining, the Rising Stars program is the right first step to acquire the skills that are in demand,” he added.

Read: Celonis Rising Stars Spotlight: Patrick North is hooked on process mining

But just because they’ve won a Nasscom Digital Skills Award, don’t think for a moment that the Celonis Academic Alliance and Celonis Academy teams in India aren’t resting on their laurels. Manjunath told me they have a lot planned for the next year. He said they plan to introduce Celonis to another 50,000+ students, offer 100+ process mining student projects, grow their research ecosystem and connect even more Celonis certified students with customers and partners to create a new generation of process professionals.