The online Nanodegree course that's trying to realize Sundar Pichai's dream of creating 20 lakh Android Developers in India

There's no age and limit for learning what you want to - Online education portals are playing major facilitators in making education available for one and for all. They are offering not just courses, but rather interesting ones that may be short-term but will actually leave you with great knowledge.

One of these portals is Udacity which has recently partnered with Google to introduce what it calls Android Basics Nanodegree program, in its bid to narrow the increasing gap between demand and supply of quality Android Developers in India.

“This is just a small step towards what Sundar Pichai announced in December, targeting 20 Lakh Android Developers in next 3 years. We are committed to this vision along with Google," says Country Manager, India Udacity Vardhan Koshal.

Now let's understand more about the course. While anyone can take it, Android Basics Nanodegree by Google is primarily for beginners. It is aimed at those with little or no programming experience and provides entry points into Java, web APIs, using a SQLite database, and more.

How will it help: It will enable a complete beginner/new developers to learn essential skills that will help in turning their ideas into actual apps for Android.

The beauty lies in the money - In India, the course costs Rs 9,800 per month, and if the students complete the course before 12 months, they get 50% fees refunded! The expected time to complete is 165 Hours. Hence for someone devoting just 21 hours a week and completing it in less than 8 weeks, the whole Nanodegree will cost less than Rs 10,000. Moreover, Google is also promising to give the first 50 graduates scholarships to enroll in the more advanced Android Developer Nanodegree program.

“Google, in partnership with Udacity, is making Android development accessible and understandable to everyone, so that regardless of your background, you can learn to build apps that improve the lives of people around you,” Shanea King-Roberson, program manager at Google, writes in an official blog post.

Notably, this is not the first time Udacity has partnered with tech companies. It has offered courses in conjunction with Google covering Android fundamentals, cloud fundamentals, UX fundamentals, and web performance.

The company founders also teamed up to offer a tech entrepreneur nanodegree last year, which was swiftly followed by a new deep learning course. Founded in 2011, Udacity has partnered with Flipkart and recently with Infosys for their hiring/ training need.

The portal has managed to raise more than $160 million in VC funding to date, including a $105 million round it closed seven months back. Click here if you want to know more details about this course.