Internet and Mobile Association launches Mobile10X

By Newsgram Staff Writer

New Delhi: The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on Wednesday launched Mobile10X — a forum to nurture and grow the apps ecosystem in India by bringing together various stakeholders. This was done with a view to bring in capability and quality among the country's app developers.

The forum has five pillars. They are– mobile startup hubs (where app testing can be done); the training of 500,000 app developers and creating five apps incubation centres across the country in the next five years; and online mentoring of app developers. The other two pillars are investor connections and industry connections.

The first App Incubation Centre is slated for launch in Bengaluru. The founding partners for it are Google and Paytm.

The board members of Mobile10X include — V Manjula, secretary, Department of IT, Biotechnology, and Science & Technology, government of Karnataka, Rajan Anandan, vice president and managing director, Google, South East Asia & India and Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder, One97 and Paytm.

The other board members are Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO, InMobi; and Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO, SnapDeal; and Subho Ray, president, IAMAI.

The IAMAI is the industry body representing the internet and mobile sector in the country.

"We are ready with the Bengaluru incubation centre. The Gurgaon centre will be coming up by January 2016. We are in talks for incubation centres in places like Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Mumbai and Pune," Subho Ray, president, IAMAI said.

This programme by IAMAI is in line with the vision of the Indian government, which set aside Rs 1,000 crore fund for technology starups in the Budget 2015-16.

"At the end of five years, we will look at 10 times the quality, 10 times the revenue and 10 times the number of developers," Anandan said.

There are around 50,000 mobile app developers in the country.

Anandan added: "India doesn't have a dearth of engineering students. The question is quality. We are trying to improve the underlying quality."

Nishant Rao, country manager, LinkedIn said around 63 percent graduates in India are unemployable.

(With inputs from IANS)