Google looks to bring more skilled developers from India on Android

BANGALORE, INDIA: The promise of Android app market in India is huge, given the sheer growth in the Android smartphones user base in the country and the incremental Internet traffic from mobile platforms as well as the staggering amount of investment being poured into the mobile backed business.

India currently sees 100 million app downloads per month which places it among the top three regions for Google Play, the official Android app store.

India is also the largest base of app developers, outside the US  and has the potential to become the no.1 developer population by 2018, with 4 million developers, as per Google's estimates.

But, despite being home to 3 million software  developers, not many Indian developers are being able to make their way to the top in the Android app store currently. Indian developers are contributing to only 2 percent of the top 1000 apps on Google Play recently.

To woo this huge developer base and ramp up the app developments on Android platform, Google has launched  ">Android Nanodegree program in India in partnership with Udacity.

Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google South East Asia & India said, “While India has millions of software developers, we still lag behind in creating world-class apps. With the launch of this program we want to bridge the gap by providing India’s developer community an easy access to learn and build high quality apps for the world. Today, only 2% of apps built in India feature in the top 1000 apps globally and our goal is to raise this to 10% in next three years.”

The Android Nanodegree is an education credential that is designed to help developers learn new skills and help them to become a more marketable Android developer as well.

Udacity is running the Android Nanodegree program for last 11 months. It partnered with Google in May at the Google I/O Developer Conference to offer localized courses. The program has 10,000 active enrollments already.

The courses are developed and taught by expert Google instructors from the Google Developer Relations team and will include project reviews, mentorship and career services from Udacity.

“Our mission at Udacity is to democratize education for everyone to help people get the jobs they want and they dream of,” said Sebastian Thrun, founder and CEO of Udacity.

The program takes an average of 6-9 months and costs Rs. 9,800 per month with Udacity refunding 50 percent of the tuition upon successful completion of the program. Google and Tata Trusts will offer 1,000 scholarships for the Android Nanodegree to deserving students across the country.

Anyone with an experience in Android programming and app development can apply for the course. The screening will be done through further assessment of the candidate's eligibility and experience.

Google will also host a career summit for thirty of the top graduates from the Android Nanodegree program in Bangalore by end of this year.