Radikally Different - Our World View

Google Wants To Train 2 Million Indian App Developers

Google has reportedly shown interest in imparting training to students and developers under its Android skilling program in India. It aims to hand out certifications to mobile app developers as part of its global initiative. This is supposedly one of the biggest news for skilled developers in India. This will be a special training that will hopefully be carried out in collaboration with public and private universities and training institutes registered under National Skill Development Corporation.

The growing need for talent and skills in the global market has led several organizations to go into partnerships and plans for expansion in India. Google’s present announcement is similar to Apple’s plans of setting up a facility in Bangalore. Android is in high competition with iOS. According to industry experts India will most likely have around 4 million software developers by 2018.

Caesar Sengupta, VP, Product Management at Google said, “India is expected to have the largest developer population globally, overtaking the US, by 2018, with four million developers. But today only 25 per cent of developers are building for mobile. We believe India is uniquely placed to innovate and shape the Internet experience of billions of users who are and will come online on the mobile platform.”

There are similar training initiatives in the pipeline. This ‘Android Fundamentals’ course will also be made freely available (under the umbrella of online Mobile Computing course starting 18th July 2016) for individuals (a collaborative effort by IITs and IISc) willing to take part in extensive Android development.

The course will be Google’s skill sharing initiative that will also include highly skilled instructors. According to Peter Lubbers, Head of Google Developer Training, “We introduced the Android Nanodegree program in India last year with Udacity, and today, we have over 11,500 students in India enrolling every month in our Android courses. For university students we have now-for the first time-introduced an instructor led Android Fundamentals course to be incorporated into university curricula in India”. This program also plans to provide job opportunities for candidates. Google’s course will be a globally recognized job-oriented Associate Android Developer Certification which will also include exam-based entry level jobs for participating people. The certification exam fee has reportedly been fixed at Rs 6,500. The exam can be taken by registering oneself onto the Google Developer training website.

Besides having training partnerships with universities and organizations like NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) Google also wants to provide open-source Android developer fundamentals practical guides and courseware (which will be made available to all for free).

The program will be made available in 2,000 universities with 4000 faculty looking after more than 250,000 students annually. This move is reportedly being considered by industry pundits as a game plan to give Apple a tough time. Google has already joined hands with Manipal Global, Edureka, Simplilearn, Koenig, Udacity and UpGrad among various other training institutes. All of them will be working together as authorised Android training partners in India. Sengupta added, “We want to contribute to the Skill India initiative and help make India the global leader in mobile app development…”