Google will train two million developers in India over the next three years as part of a new Android Skilling initiative, designed to provide “easy and affordable” access to training.

The programme will support the government’s ‘Skill India’ initiative and will see Google working with local partners as well as making its ‘Android Developer Fundamentals’ course and materials free.

Also introduced is an ‘Associate Android Developer Certification’, which can be taken online for around $100 and sets a benchmark for the industry to evaluate candidate capabilities.

The search giant believes there is a “huge opportunity” in India, which will have four million software developers by 2018. But at the moment only 25 per cent of developers are trained for mobile, leaving a gap it wants to fill.

The move comes two months after Apple said it would establish a “Design and Development Accelerator” in India, to support engineering talent and accelerate growth in the country’s iOS developer community.

In October last year, Google partnered up with the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Paytm to launch Mobile10X, a “capacity building and ecosystem enabling programme for mobile apps”.