India’s technology industry body Nasscom has launched AI Code Sarathi, a national initiative aimed at upskilling 1.5 lakh developers across corporate, startup, and academic ecosystems.
The programme comes at a time when AI is shifting from being an experimental technology to a core driver of business innovation. Nasscom said the initiative seeks to address a widening capability gap within the developer workforce as the software development process itself undergoes a structural transformation.
Under the programme, developers will be trained to work alongside AI tools across the entire software development life cycle, focusing on reducing time-to-market and treating AI as a collaborative teammate rather than just another tool.
Speaking at the launch, Ankit Bose, Head of AI at Nasscom, said, “AI Code Sarathi is not just a skilling initiative; it is a national mission to help India move from AI exploration to AI execution at scale. By empowering developers to build faster, innovate smarter, and deploy with confidence, we are laying the groundwork for India’s rise as an AI-native innovation powerhouse.”
The programme will follow a structured three-phase pathway: Explore, Engineer, and Excel.
The Explore phase, scheduled for March and April, will introduce participants to AI-assisted coding tools and workflows through the Nasscom AI-assisted developer workshop, a free four-hour programme delivered in both in-person and virtual formats. Developers will work with code-completion tools and industry-based exercises alongside experts.
The Engineer phase, from April to June, will focus on deeper technical capability building through guided learning and mentorship.
The programme will culminate in the Excel phase, which will host a national agentic AI hackathon where developers will apply their learning to solve two real-world industry problem statements focused on autonomous workflows and intelligent agents.
The hackathon will award a prize pool of ₹10 lakh to winning teams.
According to Nasscom, the structure is designed to help developers gain credible, portfolio-ready experience while validating their solutions against real business needs.
Participants who successfully complete the programme will receive blockchain-backed Nasscom certificates and contribute code through GitHub repositories, with top innovations to be recognised at the AI Confluence scheduled for July 2026.
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