Satya Nadella says Indian developers will play major role in future AI

Bengaluru: Satya Nadella is in India and has been talking about Miscrosoft's big plans for the skilling of Indian professionals in the context of the phenomenaldevelopments in the offing in the tech sector.

While talking to the developers's community in Bengaluru on Thursday, Nadella said Microsoft will empower the fast-growing developer community in India to not only build products and services for the country but also for the world.

Nadella said that Microsoft, at the end of the day, is a developer company and India holds the biggest promise in creating AI-based products on the company's AI-powered platform GitHub.

“India which is currently second to the US will have the largest developer community on GitHub by 2027. The country is currently second among the top 10 global communities creating the most generative AI projects on GitHub,” Nadella told the gathering.

Last November, Github said it had 13.2 million developers in India, with 3.5 million joining the platform from the country in 2023 alone.

Developers in India are the second biggest contributor to generative AI projects on GitHub globally. With this sustained and significant growth, GitHub forecasts that India will surpass the US in total developer population by 2027.

India’s developer community has experienced consistent YoY growth, including a 36 per cent increase in 2023.

Nadella said that 10 per cent of India’s $5 trillion economy goal by 2025 will be led by AI.

The 2023 edition of GitHub’s State of the Octoverse report showed that generative AI is driving a significant and global spike in individual contributors to generative AI projects with 148 per cent year-over-year (YoY) growth.

Notably, the US, India and Germany are leading the way among developer communities, with other regions, including the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, and France following.

Earlier, on Wednesday he addressed an audience of technology and business executivesin Mumbai, Nadella made his sales pitch for AI in and called on professionals to start adopting new technology fast or lose the race. He also talked about the plans for India seeing it as 'one of the higheset growth markets' with buoyancy is visible as exemplified in government and professional ambitions for the great changes that could occur even by 2025.

Nadella said that Microsoft is going to provide AI skilling opportunities to 2 million people in India by 2025.

He also cited the fact that every sixtth AI researcher and technologist int he world is coming from India, and in coming years a quarter of the new workforce would be from India.