Samsung, MSME ministry to set up digital academy

Aiming to offer young students a skill development course based on the Tizen operating system (OS) platform, Samsung India and the union micro, small and medium enterprises ministry on Wednesday joined hands to open MSME-Samsung Digital Academy.

The company will offer the Digital Academy course in collaboration with the ministry, and will seek to train youth to develop apps that run on the Tizen OS across a multitude of devices such as smartphones, televisions and tablets.

In its first phase, the Samsung Digital Academy will be rolled out across the 10 MSME-Samsung Technical Schools which have been set up by Samsung and the ministry following an MoU in August 2014.

Each of these schools will run a four-week long course in batches of 30 students.

The programme will eventually be scaled up to include 68 other MSME Technical Centres across the country, as well as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), and other key institutes of technical education and engineering in India.

Tizen is an open and adaptable platform offering multi-application capability across a wide range of devices, including smartphones, tablets and TVs.

"The ministry of MSME continuously looks to provide opportunities to the country's youth to access current developments across various fields. Industry collaborations allow the ministry to strengthen its skill development courses by providing up-to-date, industry-relevant training," said MSME Minister Kalraj Mishra.

"This innovative collaboration with Samsung will help youth learn to develop digital content for next-generation ecosystems. As MSME skill development programmes reach youth from all socio-economic strata, this program will also help bridge the digital divide," he added.

Samsung India Electronics president and CEO H.C.Hoong said: "India is increasingly emerging as a key player in the development of next-generation technology ecosystems. Through the Samsung Digital Academy, we are looking to take this to the next level by creating an inclusive environment to help young India leverage the growing digital technologies market."