During its Satellite India event held on Friday, GitHub announced that it was launching three new programs for students, developers, and startups at the code hosting and collaboration platform’s two-day virtual event.
GitHub COO Erica Brescia said that the first program is aimed at developers in the country called the GitHub Open Source Grants program, which will offer Rs 1 crore in grants to open-source ‘extremely valuable’ projects that set the bar high for innovation in the country and further the goal of increasing contributions to open-source software around the globe, the company stated.

In a country where software developers are constantly updating themselves and eager to put their skills to good use and contribute to open source projects, GitHub says that last year, the number of students that participated in its GitHub Campus program increased by a whopping 142 percent. Meanwhile, its Student Developer Pack saw over one lakh signups and over a hundred colleges in India adopted the company’s campus offering.

The company will now offer GitHub Externships in the country, to give students a chance to interface with companies in the country by facilitating fellowship programs so they can gain skills and the ability to succeed in an enterprise environment. This will benefit students joining companies fresh out of college who want to know more about the organizations they want to work for in the future. During a discussion held after the event, GitHub India’s country head Maneesh Sharma explained that the company’s partnerships with colleges and higher educational institutions would help students who wanted to get started with open-source technology software, through summer programs.