byteXL Adds Education and Tech Visionaries to its newly formed Advisory Board
Lalitha Prasad and Deepak Garg Roped in as strategic advisors to help the company navigate the next phase of the rapid growth it’s witnessing The company aims to grow by over 300% by reaching over 2,40,000 students by 2022
New Delhi: byteXL – one of the leading experiential learning platforms for IT career aspirants, has announced the onboarding of two eminent advisory board members – Mr. Lalitha Prasad, former Scientist at ISRO and ex Head of Corporate Learning Center, TCS and Dr. Deepak Garg from leadingindia.ai, Dean of the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Bennett University. Both the technology industry and academic leaders hold a repertoire of experience over 5 and 2 decades respectively and proven abilities in Higher Education, Learning & Development, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Emerging Technologies, and Data Analytics.
Mr. Lalitha Prasad brings to the table an array of experience with close to 5 decades of expertise as a Scientist at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO, and as the Head – Corporate Learning Centre at Tata Consultancy Services. The veteran expert obtained his Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics in 1972 from Andhra University and served as a Scientist at the space center for 24 years. During his tenure at ISRO, he was also a member of the ISRO Software Engineering Standards committee and also Qualified as an auditor for ISO 9001 standard. He has vast experience of training on Unix, C, C++, OOP, Web technologies, Python and Python based tools for between 10 to 25 years, at major organizations like World Bank Group, Quest Global, IIITMK, among others. His core scientific and mathematical competencies help him bring astute analytical abilities and critical thinking. As the Head of Corporate Learning Centre at TCS, he empowered his trainees with crucial decision-making skills, corporate leadership and problem-solving skills and helps to be at the top of innovation through strategic partnerships.
Dr. Deepak Garg is a key figure in Indian Academia and Startups with his IEEE Leadership and Social Connect. He is Director of NVIDIA-Bennett Center of Research on AI and also Director of leadingindia.ai – a nationwide Research and Skilling initiative on AI, Dean of the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Bennett University. He holds extensive experience in Project Delivery under deadlines and quality metrics, Higher Education, Research Project Management, Deep Reinforcement Learning, and Data Analytics. With a perspective for transforming higher education, he is adept at hiring quality faculty, generating International Grants, establishing Industrial and Foreign collaborations are his strengths besides driving objectives for Industry Scale Consultancy.
Upon the induction of the eminent advisory board members, Mr. Karun Tadepalli, CEO & Co-Founder – byteXL said, “EdTech has revolutionized the way students are learning now right from kindergarten to college. byteXL is taking the trend one notch ahead by preparing career-ready candidates than mere scholars in a way that the students can handle any industry situation from day 1 of their employment. We are encouraged to leap further with the addition of the right kind of expertise to join us to drive our vision to enhance the employability quotient of IT students. Mr. Prasad and Mr. Garg bring vast experience in delivering unique industry solutions by identifying the critical requirements of the business and giving it a competitive edge. Their insights and knowledge on new-age technologies and higher education will be an asset for byteXL as we plan to expand multifold in 2022.”
“The company is already working with 72,000 students and aims to grow by over 3-folds by reaching over 2,40,000 students. As byteXL is scaling up at a fast pace, we needed experienced advisors to navigate the company through this phase”, Mr. Tadepalli added.
“The Indian IT students learning has been facing a disconnect with the industry requirements. This issue of immense importance needs to be addressed. I found that the byteXL team has been doing a tremendous job to help the institutes manage this. This is a privilege for me to be a part of the byteXL team and contribute to developing much-skilled technology professionals for the country,” said Dr. Deepak Garg on being a part of byteXL team.
On his new role at byteXL, Mr. Lalitha Prasad commented, “In my 50 years of professional journey, throughout I have noticed that there is no dearth of talent in India, but the way we help them shape up their professional journey has been the missing link. byteXL, in a short period, has done significant work in this area, and I would like to support them in this task around nation-building by enabling the students to become more skilled in the emerging technologies and get appropriate employment opportunities. In associating with byteXL, I hope to bring to table years of expertise from both scientific and consulting backgrounds.”
byteXL has witnessed incredible growth in just two years of its launch and has achieved tremendous traction from the engineering colleges. Over 72,000 students from 70 colleges actively learn on the byteXL platform with an engagement rate of more than 90%. byteXL has entered partnerships with the likes of Microsoft, GoDaddy Academy, Fortinet NSE, Leading India AI, and Skysthelimit.org for curriculum vetting and certifications.