The partnership with Udacity is aimed at making India as the Android application developer hub.

In a move to give fillip to the android application developer ecosystem in India, technology major Google has introduced a new program called ‘Android Nanodegrees’.

The programme is being introduced in India through Google’s partnership with Udacity, a US-based for-profit educational organisation which offers massive open online courses (MOOC).

Udacity, founded by former Google executive Sebastian Thrun, also believes that the partnership will help it to grow its student base in India. Presently, India is the second largest market for the company, contributing around 7 per cent of its total online student base.

“While India has millions of software developers, we still lag in creating world-class applications. With the launch of this programme, we want to bridge the gap for the developer community by giving an easy access to learn and build high-quality apps,” said said Rajan Anadan, vice-president and managing director, Google South East Asia and India.

According to Google, India is the second largest developer base in the world and has the potential to become the number one developer population by 2018, with 4 million developers.

With the significant growth in developer population in the country, Google, which operates the Android marketplace Play, aims to make India as the largest contributor. The search giant also aims to make India a global leader in mobile application development.

“Only two per cent of apps built in India feature in the top 1,000 apps globally and our goal is to raise this to 10 per cent in next three years,” added Mr. Anandan.

Google has also partnered philanthropic organisation Tata Trusts for the programme. Under this students who qualify certain criteria under the programme will receive 1,000 scholarships, out of which of 500 will be offered by Tata Trust.

The program takes an average of six to nine months and costs Rs. 9,800 per month, with Udacity refunding 50 per cent of the tuition fee upon completion of the course.