GitHub’s India user base at 13.2 mn, projected to overtake US by 2027

The number of developers us­ing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform GitHub in India has reached 13.2 million and the country is likely to over­take the US as the largest base of programmers by 2027, says a report.

India continues to have the fastest-growing developer population with about 3.5 million new entrants joining GitHub’s platform in 2023, according to GitHub’s State of the Octoverse report released on Wednesday.

The AI platform on Wed­ne­s­day also launched GitHub Co­pilot Chat for general use and previews of the new GitHub Copilot Enterprise; new AI-powered security features; and the GitHub Copilot Partner Program.

The chat interface will allow users to interact with the Copilot tool and provide access to coding information and support without requiring them to navigate through the documentation. It can answer a wide range of coding-rel­a­ted questions on to­pics including sy­n­tax, programming concepts, test cases and debugging.

The platform also released new AI-powered security features with GitHub Advanced Security. GitHub Copilot Enter­prise will be available from February 2024 for $39 per user per month.

The 2023 edition of GitHub’s State of the Octoverse report shows that generative AI is driving a significant, global spike in individual contributors to GenAI projects with 148 per cent year-on-year gro­w­th. The US, India, and Germany are leading the way among developer communities, followed by regions such as the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and France.

“As we saw with open source, India’s influence extends far beyond creating competitive global enterprises; it’s impacting the future of technology and society as a whole. With the rise of AI, In­dia’s developers can propel this journey even further. That’s why GitHub is focused on providing an AI-powered platform to accelerate every developer’s productivity and happiness,” said Sharryn Napier, vice president of Asia-Pacific region at GitHub.

The Octoverse report also highlighted the growing trajectory of India’s developer community, which has seen a consistent annual growth. In 2023, the community grew by 36 per cent.