India Ranks Second Globally in Generative AI Project Contributions on GitHub

GitHub, the world’s leading AI-powered developer platform, today announced that developers in India are the second biggest contributor to AI projects on GitHub globally. This comes as India’s developer population continues to grow with 3.5M new developers joining the platform in 2023, resulting in 13.2M total developers on GitHub in India.

The 2023 edition of GitHub’s State of the Octoverse report shows that generative AI is driving a significant and global spike in individual contributors to generative AI projects with 148% year-over-year (YoY) growth. Notably, the United States, India, and Germany are leading the way among developer communities with other regions including the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, and France following.

Sharryn Napier, VP of APAC at GitHub, said: “India's growing developer community is central to the country's position as an innovation powerhouse. It's exciting to see Indian developers making significant contributions to generative AI projects on GitHub, highlighting India's growing significance in the AI landscape, with the country’s developers directly shaping the future of AI innovation worldwide.”

“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 developers’ productivity and happiness. Just imagine what India will be able to achieve if its 13.2M developers are empowered with AI. Not only will this transform enterprise innovation and productivity, but it will elevate developer happiness and make a substantial impact on India's economy and society as a whole,” Sharryn added.

The Octoverse report also highlights the remarkable trajectory of India’s developer community, which has experienced consistent YoY growth, including a 36% increase in 2023. With this sustained and significant growth, GitHub forecasts that India will surpass the United States in total developer population by 2027.

Contributing to this growth, as a part of the UN-backed Digital Public Goods Alliance, India’s been building its digital public infrastructure with open materials — ranging from software code to AI models — to improve digital payments and ecommerce systems for itself and other countries. Here’s a list of OSS projects that Indian developers have built and are contributing to on GitHub.