Google to fund 130,000 scholarships in training Indians for emerging tech

Sensing the need to skill the Indian talent for emerging technologies, Google, in association with technology learning platform Pluralsight and educational institution Udacity, on Thursday announced a new scholarship programme that will help train 130,000 developers and students across the country.

As part of the programme, Google will fund 100,000 scholarships on the Pluralsight technology learning platform and 30,000 scholarships on Udacity platform.

The scholarship would enable students gain access to advanced learning curriculum and further their employability in mobile and web development, machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud platforms.

"The new scholarship programme is in tandem with Google's aim to train two million developers in India. The country is the second largest developer ecosystem in the world and is bound to overtake the US by 2021," William Florance, Developer Products Group and Skilling Lead for India, Google, told reporters here.

In 2015, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had stated that the global Internet search engine giant will train 2 million new android developers in the next three years in India.

"In the last one year, we have engaged over half a million students and developers across India through a variety of programmes and initiatives. Since we announced our skilling initiative in India, 210,000 students have completed Google developed courses on Udacity, with 117,000 students completing the course this year," Florance informed.

With Udacity, 1,000 developers will also be selected to receive full Nanodegree scholarships.

"Unlike China, India is lagging in innovation but is adopting technologies faster. There is an urgent need to upskill and reskill India's technology workforce," Florance said.

According to Arun Rajamani, Country Head and General Manager, Pluralsight, India's tech workforce is going through a phase of transition.

"We are thrilled to partner with Google to help developers across India understand their skill level using Pluralsight IQ and advance their skill sets in four key roles: Android Developer, Mobile Web Specialist, Cloud Architect and Data Engineer," Rajamani said.

"With this scholarship programme, students can master web and mobile development skills with the experts from Udacity and Google," added Ishan Gupta, Managing Director-Udacity India.