In a bid to bridge the skills gap in the mobile app development segment in India, Google has launched a new certification program to train two million Android app developers over the next three years.
The company hopes to support the government’s Skill India initiative through this program.
India is expected to have the largest developer population globally, overtaking the United States, by 2018, with four million developers. However, currently only 25% of developers are building for mobile.
Google has also launched an instructor-led training program on Android Fundamentals, available across public, private universities and training institutes of the National Skill Development Corporation of India.
"By building a world class curriculum and making it easily accessible to millions of students and developers in India, we want to contribute to the Skill India initiative and help make India the global leader in mobile app development,” Google VP of product management Caesar Sengupta said.
The 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 this month. The Android Developer Fundamentals reference course and all practicals and courseware will also be available as open source to everyone for free.
In addition to partnering with the National Skill Development Corporation of India, Google has also teamed up with training partners such as Edureka, Koenig, Manipal Global, Simplilearn, Udacity and UpGrad – Google will train their trainers and update their Android courseware to prepare their students for the Android Certification and a career in Android development.