Digital impetus

One thousand Android Nanodegree scholarships will be offered to software developers by the Tata Trusts along with Google and Udacity, a global educational organization offering massive open online courses focused on vocational aspects for professionals according to a report in The Times of India (TOI) dated September 21, 2015. Android Nanodegree is an education credential that is designed to help developers learn new skills to advance their careers in a few months on any device, from anywhere, at their own pace, the report explains.
The program comprises "courses developed and taught by expert Google instructors and will include project reviews, mentorship and career services from Udacity,” the report states.
Explaining that the Tata Trusts and Google will give 500 Nanodegree scholarships each, the article continues that "the program, which is open for enrolment right now, takes an average of six to nine months and costs Rs 9,800 per month.” Udacity will refund 50% of the tuition on completion of the course.
Tata Trusts development manager Ganesh Neelam is quoted as saying, "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.”
Rajan Anandan, Google South East Asia and India vice president and managing director said, "We (India) still lag behind in creating world class apps. Today, only two percent of apps built in India feature in the top 1,000 apps globally.” He stated that their goal was to raise this to 10% in the next three years. An app is a computer application designed to perform a group of coordinated functions, tasks or activities for the benefit of the user, on a computer or other handheld device.
Quoting Google sources, the report said that "India being the second largest developer population in the world with three million software developers has the potential to become the number one developer population by 2018, with four million developers.”