BENGALURU: With a vision to transform India into a hub of high-quality mobile developers for global and local apps, Google today announced the launch of a program to offer Android Nanodegrees in India in partnership with Udacity. The Android Nanodegree is an education credential that is designed to help developers learn new skills and advance their careers in a few months from anywhere on any device at their own pace. As a part of the program Google and Tata Trusts will offer 1,000 scholarships for the Android Nanodegree to deserving students across the country.

With India being the second largest developer population in the world with 3 million software developers, India has the potential to become the #1 developer population by 2018, with 4 million developers. By providing easy and affordable access to a world-class skill and educational program to Indian developers, Google aims to help India become a global leader in mobile app development.

The Udacity Android Nanodegree program comprises of courses developed and taught by expert Google instructors from the Google Developer Relations team and will include project reviews, mentorship and career services from Udacity. The curriculum will be updated regularly with new releases and will provide developers with a certificate that will help them to become a more marketable Android developer.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative, Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google South East Asia & India said, “While India has millions of software developers, we still lag behind in creating worldclass 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. We’re pleased to announce, that Google along with Tata Trusts will offer 500 free scholarships each to developers for Android Developer Nanodegree program.”

Mr. Ganesh Neelam, Development Manager, Tata Trusts said, “With over 381 million internet enabled mobile phone subscriptions in India, there is a growing demand for the internet as a multi-purpose solution provider. Tata Trusts is proud to be associated with Google to provide 500 scholarships to deserving aspirants in the field of Android development in India. Through this initiative Tata Trusts helps build the digital ecosystem and stands by its core objective of creating a sustainable difference for empowering communities across the Nation.”

“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. “We are excited to be launching Udacity in India today and honoured to be partnering with Google and Tata Trusts as we bring our Nanodegrees to millions of people in India.”

The Udacity Android Nanodegree program is open for enrollment right now. The program takes an average of 6-9 months and costs 9,800 per month with Udacity refunding 50 percent of the tuition upon completion. 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. Scholarships for the Android Nanodegree are available immediately.

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