GitHub added 1.8 mn Indian developers last year, aims to reach 10 mn by 2023

Last year, India added 1.8 million developers to the open-source code hosting platform GitHub, making it the fastest growing country in open-source contribution.  

GitHub officially launched its operations in India in February 2020. The local community now has 5.8 million developers, who have built 7,300,000 repositories. Over one million developers have created their first repository on Github in India in the time period, according to statement released on Friday. 

“We have about 200 employees currently in India. Since launching an office in the country in February last year, we will continue to grow at a good rate,” Erica Brescia, COO of GitHub, said at an online press briefing.  

The company refused to provide figures of the total number of its global workforce.  

Compared to 40% globally, contributions on the platform increased by 75% in India. GitHub also said that it expects the community of developers in India to touch 10 million by 2023. 

“India has become an innovation powerhouse, with open source software development at the core. The growth in activity and engagement shows how powerful and invested India’s software development has become,” Maneesh Sharma, country manager, GitHub India, said.  

The platform also said that the usage of its enterprise offering -- GitHub Enterprise – tripled over the last year. Companies using GitHub in India include Infosys, Cognizant. InMobi, Capillary Technologies, Swiggy, ArisGlobal, Udaan and ShareChat among others.  

Watch: Erica Brescia and Maneesh Sharma on GitHub’s strategy to build its India community 

During the Github Satellite India event’s keynote on Friday, Brescia also announced three new programmes aimed at the Indian developer community --   GitHub Open Source Grants, GitHub Externships and GitHub Accelerate.  

Under the Open Source Grants, GitHub will offer grants for a sum of Rs 1 crore to support select projects from startups in India.  

The GitHub Externships program will allow students to engage with companies in India through fellowship and skill development programs. GitHub also said that it witnessed 142% growth in its student participation, with over 100,000 students signing onto the GitHub Student Developer pack, along with partnerships with more than 100 higher education institutions in India.   

Additionally, GitHub will also partner with IT lobby NASSCOM FutureSkills to upskill young developers in the country. NASSCOM Futureskills is a programme aimed at increasing skillsets of developers in upcoming technologies amid changing job environments.

The third programme, GitHub accelerate, will be a startup accelerator program focused on incubators and the venture partners ecosystem in India. Through the programme, Github said it will provide access to Github enterprise products to more than 1,000 startups in the coming year.