Samsung, MSME ministry to set up digital academy; offer courses on Tizen OS platform

NEW DELHI: Samsung India has signed an agreement with the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) to set up MSME-Samsung Digital Academy.

The new academy will offer young students a skill development course based on the Tizen OS platform.

The MSME-Samsung Digital Academy is being set up with an objective to create a pool of trained youth who can leverage the software development and testing opportunities presented by innovative digital technologies based on the Tizen OS.

In its first phase, the Samsung Digital Academy will be rolled out across the 10 MSME-Samsung Technical Schools which have been set up by Samsung and Ministry of MSME following an MoU in August 2014.

Each of these schools will run a four-week long course in batches of 30 students. The program will eventually be scaled up to include 68 other MSME Technical Centres across the country, as well as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), and other key institutes of technical education and engineering in India.

The company will offer the Digital Academy course in collaboration with the Ministry, and will seek to train youth to develop apps that run on the Tizen OS across a multitude of devices such as smartphones, televisions and tablets.

“Industry collaborations allow the Ministry of MSME to strengthen its skill development courses by providing up-to-date, industry-relevant training. This innovative collaboration with Samsung will help youth learn to develop digital content for next-generation ecosystems. As MSME skill development programs reach youth from all socio-economic strata, this program will also help bridge the digital divide,” said Union Minister for MSME, Kalraj Mishra.

HC Hong, President & CEO, Samsung India Electronics, said, "We are pleased that through our collaboration with the Ministry of MSME, Samsung Digital Academy will also contribute to India’s skill development mission from a digital perspective. We hope that many young students utilise this opportunity and be part of the development of an exciting, new era in smart devices that will shape the future.”

With a strong mix of theory and lab-based training, the inaugural Samsung Digital Academy course will cover topics such as an introduction to the Tizen platform, the Tizen app development process, testing and debugging, device Application Program Interface (APIs) as well as packaging and installation of designed apps on various devices. Students will also be trained on how to migrate existing apps on to the Tizen platform. The curriculum will be developed by Samsung Research Institutes in Delhi and Bengaluru. Samsung will also provide the Tizen Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as Samsung Z1 phones for testing purposes.

Tizen is an open and adaptable platform offering multi-application capability across a wide range of devices, including smartphones, tablets and TVs. Samsung’s first Tizen-based smartphone, the Samsung Z1, was launched in India earlier this year.