India produces more software engineers than any other country in the world, but does not equip them with the necessary skillsets to take on the real cases. Infact, a recently released report had found that less than 20 percent of engineers are employable in software jobs. Although Indian engineers have conquered Silicon Valley in the US, a lot is still left to be desired.
One of the reasons where Indian engineers lack is the knowledge of the skillsets required by the current Industry!
Google wants to change that and has now launched a program to train 2 Million mobile developers in the country for its Android platform. Considering the number of developers in India who can be trained, Google can expect to get some innovate apps and ideas for its smartphone users. This was also one of the important announcements made by Google CEO, Sunder Pichai during the last #GoogleForIndia event.
Caesar Sengupta, Vice President (Product Management) at Google, said, “With nearly four million developers, India is expected to have largest developer population globally by 2018. But today, only 25 per cent of them are building for mobile.”
Called the ‘Android Skilling Program’, the initiative will be available for free to budding developers in India through public and private universities via an instructor-led training programme.
“We are hoping to get in about 2,000 different universities, training about 4,000 faculty to reach in excess of 250,000 students in these universities every year,” said Peter Lubbers, Head of Developer Trading – Google.
How can one get access to the skilling program?
If you’re studying at one of the IITs or IISc, you will have free access to Google’s program through NPTEL (National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning). Other universities as well will get the benefits of the service through an in-person classroom program.
Google has tied-up with Edureka, Koenig, Manipal Global, Simplilearn, Udacity and UpGrad, who will not just provide certification to mobile developers, but also train them comprehensively on Google’s behalf. This way Google can shed some of its burden to these MOOC facilitators.
A fee of Rs. 6,500 will have to be paid to take Google’s certification exam “Associate Android Developer Certification” , once the trainee has completed his/her training. So the good thing is that you don’t have to pay for the course, and you only have to pay about $100 dollars to get a formal certification which will enable you to apply for an entry-level Android developer job.
Can this alter the face of education in India?
Ask any student of a big known university, and you’ll hear about the outdated curriculums and ways of teaching. MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, aim to bridge the gap between the courses taught in college and the real-time applications of these subjects.
Thankfully, foreign universities have been providing free courses to the people in India to understand more about courses different from their field of study. In a way, technology has opened more doors to one’s career. Now a civil engineering graduate can learn to code and become a developer in a matter of a couple of months.
Google, while realising the potential in India, will also reap benefits from the fact that over 2 Million developers will always have something new and exciting coming up. There is no dearth of competition in India, and as the courses progress, more and more users will be seen signing up for this program.
All in all, this is a very positive move from Google to train Indian mobile developers and it is good to see the company keep its word. Let us see how Apple responds to this initiative, considering they have just opened a development centre in India.
