Google launches online IT courses in India

Bengaluru: Search engine giant, Google launched IT degrees in India on Monday, under which it will offer technical courses, focusing on teaching software developers to build apps for Android, the Google-backed mobile operating system. The lessons will be given by Google instructors based in the United States. The degrees will cost Rs 9,800 ($148) a month and will take between six and nine months to complete. But on completion of the course, the students will get 50% of tuition costs back.

For this, the global IT giant has teamed up with online education company Udacity and Indian conglomerate Tata. The companies will also offer 1,000 scholarships and all graduates will be invited to a job fair next year hosted by Google in India.

Google is looking to cash in on skilling up many of India's 3.6 million developers, the second largest number worldwide, at the same time seeking more developers who can programme for Android devices. "While India has millions of software developers, we still lag behind in creating world-class apps," Google India managing director Rajan Anandan told reporters in India's IT hub of Bangalore.

The launch comes as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to Silicon Valley this weekend as part of a visit to the US, seeking foreign investment in India's plethora of start-ups as well as financial tie-ups with US tech giants. PM Modi, who will meet Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, is expected to reassure IT CEOs of efforts to reduce red tape and make it easier to do business in India, a massive market of 1.26 billion people.

India also boasts a large number of engineering and IT specialists who have left the country to rise to the top of the US corporate world, including Google's new chief executive Sundar Pichai and Microsoft boss Satya Nadella.