The CEO of technology behemoth Microsoft, Satya Nadella, declared in Bengaluru on January 8 that 75,000 women engineers in India would receive training and certification from the company by 2024.
“It’s not just about skills; it’s about being able to create economic opportunity for an increasingly skilled workforce,” Nadella said, speaking to the company’s technologists and developer community in India at the “Microsoft Build” event in Bengaluru.
As is customary, Nadella arrived in Mumbai on February 7 for a two-day visit. The subject for 2024 is artificial intelligence and the opportunities that arise from it.
The course will be an extension of the Microsoft program “Code; Without Barriers,” which was first introduced in September 2021. The program was started by Microsoft and 13 other businesses from nine Asia Pacific nations to assist address the gender gap in the rapidly expanding cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital technology industries in the region.
As stated in a press release from the company, “The program offers support, training, and networking opportunities for women in technical roles, including developers and coders, to contribute to inclusive economic growth, encourage innovation, and reflect the social makeup of the region.”
According to Nadella, Microsoft Research-incubated Karya.ai is bringing AI jobs to rural India.
Karya employs Indians, mostly in rural regions, by creating datasets in multiple Indian languages for research and AI model training.
Karya.ai’s CEO and cofounder, Manu Chopra, stated that his firm pays its employees 20 times more than the minimum wage in India—roughly Rs 400 per hour—for recording words on their iPhones. In a video that was shown following Nadella’s address, Chopra stated that workers get royalties if the data produced by Karya is resold.
He declared, “Our goal is to empower every individual and every organization in India, starting with you all as developers.”
