Google has launched Android Skilling Program in the country with an aim to train two million developers in India over the next three years.
The company hopes to provide easy and affordable access to a world-class skilling and educational program for Indian developers in support of the Skill India initiative of the government.
Google says India will have four million software developers by 2018. However today only less than 25% of these developers are trained to develop and build for the mobile platform.
The company has also announced The Android Developer Fundamentals course which is an instructor-led training program that will be made available across public and private universities and training institutes of the National Skill Development Corporation of India. This in-person training will be integrated with Computer Science curricula of universities within this calendar year. The Android Developer Fundamentals course material will also be covered on NPTEL (an IIT Madras project in collaboration with the IITs and IISc) as part of its online Mobile Computing course starting July 18, 2016. The Android Developer Fundamentals reference course and all practicals and courseware will be available as Open Source to everyone for free.
Moreover, Google has also teamed up with training partners like Edureka, Koenig, Manipal Global, Simplilearn, Udacity and UpGrad who will operate as Authorized Android Training Partners in India.
Finally, the tech giant has launched Associate Android Developer Certification—a performance-based exam, that will help candidates obtain entry-level Android Developer jobs in the Industry. The initiative is being rolled out in a bid support potential Android developer employers. Developers who are ready to be certified can log on to the website and take the certification exam (priced at INR 6,500).
Peter Lubbers, Senior Program Manager, Google Developer Training, said in a blog post,
India’s developer ecosystem is well-established globally and we believe that the Android Skilling program addresses the need to produce world-class, skilled-up developers and scale up the mobile developer ecosystem to help make India a global leader in mobile app development.