AN INDIAN American Silicon Valley entrepreneur has launched a unique initiative to get techies to volunteer their time for developing software and applications that will benefit people in India and other developing countries.
The initiative dubbed Code for India was launched by Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist Karl Mehta.
“As a firm believer in the power of crowd sourced and open sourced technology, we have created Code for India to provide tools to fight day-to-day public service issues,” Mehta told reporters.
“Code for India’s use of technology will promote transparency, participation and efficiency in the way local people can voice their concern and find solutions,” he said.
“The transformative power of technology will aid India and other developing countries facing similar problems,” said Mehta at the launch of the non-profit organization based in Mountain View, California.
Though he is starting small, Mehta has huge ambitions. His goal is to get a million programmers across the globe to donate their time.
For now, Code for India has a few hundred engineers from Mehta’s personal network, programmers from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Visa.
However, Mehta sees a huge base of potential volunteers from India itself. The top 10 software outsourcing firms, Mehta said, employ a few million programmers.
“The goal is to have a team of million software engineers to develop softwares for India,” Mehta said.
He hopes that he would soon achieve the target, given the thousands of requests he has been receiving from Indian techies after it was formally launched on Thursday (August 15).
Professor Vijay Pande of Stanford University, Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education and Vish Mishra, venture director at Clearstone and mentor to The Hive and The Fabric have joined the advisory board.
“Code for India is a unique and commendable initiative whereby the sharpest of computing minds can apply themselves to altruistic causes. TiE Delhi NCR is proud to be associated with the programme,” said Deep Kalra, president of TiE-New Delhi.
Mehta said the team would volunteer eight hours of software development per month to develop softwares worth $8-10bn per annum.
