“Indian GitHub developers will overtake US in 27”

BENGALURU: Microsoft-owned development platform GitHub onboarded an additional 2.2 million developers in India in 2024, taking the country’s headcount to 15.4 million. By 2027, the Indian developer community using GitHub is expected to surpass the US community – which currently stands at 21 million. Last year, GitHub added 3.5 million developers, taking its developer base in India to 13.2 million.

The momentum is clear, with the country’s developer base tripling from 5.8 million in 2021. “About 200,000 computer science graduates are pursuing engineering degrees, driving convergence. India can be a leader not only in software but also in artificial intelligence. Both children and adults will learn to code in their native language, which will lead to a long-term influx of developers,” said Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub.

Increase

As of December last year, developers in India had over 36.9 million repositories on GitHub, compared to 27.4 million in the same period a year earlier. Last year, over 3.8 lakh Indian developers contributed over 9.7 million to open source software. In comparison, in 2022, over 3.2 lakh Indian developers contributed over 8.1 million to open source software. From reaping the benefits of AI pair programming to accelerating the next era of software development, GitHub improves developer productivity.

Last year, GitHub surpassed $1 billion in recurring revenue. Recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that GitHub’s revenues grew to over 40% year over year, driven by the development and adoption of Copilot for GitHub’s AI developer tool. Copilot has 1.8 million paid subscribers and has been adopted by over 50,000 companies worldwide, including Autodesk, Dell and Goldman Sachs. In India, GitHub counts Cognizant, Infosys, MakeMyTrip and Paytm among its top customers. Among the latest AI features, Copilot Enterprise adapts Copilot to a company’s code base and allows developers to communicate with it in natural language. Dohmke grew up in Marzahn, on the outskirts of Berlin, on the eastern side of the wall, before it fell. “The complexity of software systems has increased compared to the early 1990s.

There wasn’t much software back then, but today you can’t imagine a world without software,” he said. When asked how GitScore along with GenAI can be the ultimate litmus test for understanding a developer’s proficiency, Dohmke said that in many interviews, instead of asking the developer to write code, interviewers ask him or her to use Copilot to write the same piece of code. “It shows their ability to prompt and reason. It provides good insight into whether a developer not only understands how to work with models, but also how they validate the code they write, he said. GitScore offers a comprehensive overview of GitHub developer profile statistics and code analysis results.