The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has led professionals and students stay at home as the government imposed a 21-day nationwide total lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19. It will be worthwhile to make the best use of the time and upskill by signing up various certificate and other courses.

Here is our list of five platforms that can help upskilling:

1. UpGrad: It is an online platform that offers educational services. Its range of programmes consists digital marketing, product management, entrepreneurship, data analytics, data-driven management, and digital technology management. It offers industry insights and student support services. Professionals can get a chance to study about open source tools and libraries, Python, databases, SQL, data visualization, data analysis and machine learning.

2. Udacity: It is a global life-long learning platform connecting education to jobs and providing students with skills to advance careers. Udacity Nanodegree programmes provide credentials earned through a series of online courses and projects in an array of subjects from self-driving cars and AI to data science and digital marketing. Udacity collaborates with more than 200 global employer-partners including AT&T, Google, Facebook, Mercedes-Benz and NVIDIA to close talent gaps.

3. Shine Learning: This is the country’s professional course and career skills portal. Launched by Shine.com, Shine Learning has a vision to up skill the Indian talent pool to adapt to the changing job market. Shine Learning uses an algorithm that not only predicts emerging skill sets but also recommends courses to its users after analyzing their resume and application history. Shine learning to provide a series of online courses and certification in a variety of subjects like sales & marketing, IT software, digital marketing, big data, data science and others. These certifications come with flexible study options; giving an edge to professionals who can work and learn at the same time.

4. Coursera: It is an online learning platform that offers open online courses (MOOC), specializations, and degrees. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, specializations, and degrees in a variety of subjects, such as engineering, data science, machine learning, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, and others.

5. Simplilearn: It is a leading certification training provider. This platform provides online training in disciplines such as cyber security, cloud computing, project management, digital marketing, and data science among others, where technologies and best practices are changing rapidly and demand for qualified candidates significantly exceeds supply.