Google teams up with Pluralsight, Udacity to train 1.3 lakh Indian youth

Google in association with technology learning platform Pluralsight and educational institution Udacity has announced a new scholarship programme to help train 130,000 developers and students across India to create a pool of highly skilled tech workforce in India.

Google is sponsoring 100,000 scholarships on the Pluralsight learning platform and 30,000 scholarships on Udacity to help developers gain access to advanced learning curriculum and further their employability in emerging technologies such as mobile and web development, machine learning, AR/VR, artificial intelligence, and cloud platforms.

"The Scholarship program would have two phases. The first phase would have free access to our courses in mobile and web development along with mentorship and community support. The top 1,000 students earn an additional 6-month scholarship to our Mobile and Web Developer Nanodegree programs, which includes mentorship, community support, and expert project reviews," said Ishan Gupta, Managing Director - Udacity India.

This scholarship programme is part of Google's India focused initiative to train two million developers in India, to help spur innovation and support the growth of India's start-up ecosystem.

"The new scholarship program 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.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai in 2015 had stated that the company will train 2 million new android developers in the next three years in India.

"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. To build on this momentum, this scholarship program, will make it easy for students and developers to gain the skills they need to be successful in the changing technology landscape," said William Florance, Developer Products Group and Skilling Lead for India, Google.

Since the last year and a half, Google has trained over a thousand faculty over 400 colleges and 11 state universities for the technologies of the future which has already benefited 75,000 students, said Florance at the sidelines of the event.

Nasscom has predicted that by 2020, over one-third of skills (35 per cent) that are considered important in today's workforce will change and in 20 years 65 per cent of jobs will be absolutely new that we do not even know of today. Some jobs will disappear, others will grow and jobs that don't even exist today will become commonplace.

Arun Rajamani, country head and general manager, Pluralsight, believes 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 added.

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