CodeChef to strengthen software development

MUMBAI, INDIA: Directi, an Internet product company, today announced the formal launch of CodeChef. According to the company, CodeChef is India's largest, non-commercial, multi-platform for online programming competition.

According to Directi's founder, chairman and CEO Bhavin Turakhia, though India is considered IT superpower, Indian tech institutes and universities are not found among the top 50 list of International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC).

“However, Indian tech universities are placed on the honorary list of tech institutes. It's embarrassing for us to call our country as IT superpower as no Indian institute is in the top 50 benchmark. About 37 per cent of the best tech students globally are in the US while 99.33 percent of the world's best tech students are outside India. And about 0.67 per cent of world's best tech students are within India,” Turakhia said.

Further he pointed out that the world's one third (36.32 per cent) best tech students are trained in the US with 37 institutes, while India, with its top five IITs, trains about 0.67 per cent and the Indian software developer community contributes less than 2 per cent to open source projects.

According to Turakhia, one of the reasons for such a state is that most institutes and colleges don't truly recreate real world scenarios and allow budding software developers to collaborate with professionals. Among other reasons, he pointed that inconsistent power supply to tech institutes and colleges hampers students from using computers and accessing Internet resources.

“CodeChef is the first step towards software development in India via competitions and educational initiatives. We designed CodeChef as an initiative to bridge this gap by enabling knowledge sharing, encouraging collaboration and driving learning through competition,” he explained.

“We are determined to supplement the Indian education system and hone the programming talent in the country. Through the CodeChef Campus Chapter program, we work with universities to help aspiring software developers in India morph into highly talented professionals,” Turakhia added.

Actually, Directi initiated CodeChef in March this year with monthly contests in more than 35 different programming languages and aimed to test skills and software development skills. More than 800 institutes have joined the CodeChef's Campus Chapter program.

Every month, new challenges or problems are placed on the site and then tech students, working professionals and software experts submit their own codes to solve the challenge. The best software code provider can win prizes up to Rs.50,000.

In the past five months over 250,000 individuals visited CodeChef's site and over 11,000 users have submitted their codes. Moreover, working professionals from over 200 companies have participated in the contests and code submission is growing at the rate of 36 per cent.

About 5000-6000 submitted codes have been made public on the site for learning and understanding purpose. Directi runs CodeChef contest in US, along with India and software developers are participating from various parts of the world; however, the core focus remains India.

Now, the company has plans to organize the annual CodeChef cup later this year. Interestingly, Directi recruits its work force by testing their software programming skills in the same way.