India is easily one of the most technologically literate nations in the world (per capita) so it should come as no big surprise that companies turn to the country for tech support. Of course, if you have ever tried to call customer service or tech support for many companies—both small and large—you have likely noticed that the representative had a bit of an accent.
As a matter of fact, major tech companies—Apple, Facebook, and Google—view India as a key market for future expansion. Google, though, is trying to stay far ahead of the game, it seems, with a goal to train a significant number of Android programmers in India by 2018.
India is home to approximately one million people who are already working on Android solutions. And Google expects to at least another 4 million developers within the next two years. This, then, would make India the largest Android developer base in the world.
India – 4 Million Developers by 2018
“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,” explains Google vice president of product management Caesar Sengupta.
He goes on to say, “We are launching a specially-designed instructor-led training programme on Android Fundamentals. This will be made available across public and private universities and training institutes of the National Skill Development Corporation of India (NSDC).”
Peter Lubbers, Google’s head of developer training, also says that the company hopes to train approximately two million new people over the next two years. And to do this, he says, the tech giant has already partnered with top universities—including Amity University, Lovely Professional University, GD Goenka University and Rayat Bahra University—as well as major training organizations like: Edureka, Koenig, Manipal Global, Simplilearn, Udacity and UpGrad. Together, these organizations will operate in India as Authorised Android Training Partners.
Lubbers adds, “We are also training the trainers to update their Android courseware to prepare students for the Android Certification and a career in Android development…We expect to train about 4,000 faculty members.”
And, again, it looks like Apple is leading the charge into India as Apple is also making major investments for a push in that region as well.