GitHub, the Microsoft-owned code-hosting platform, has reached an impressive milestone in India with over 10 million developers using the platform to build software. This number has helped India become the second-largest market for GitHub, behind the US.
This growth in India is part of a larger trend of regions outside of North America becoming increasingly important for the platform. In 2015, almost a third of developers on the platform were from North America, but now, some of the fastest-growing regions are in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. In Brazil alone, over 3 million new developers use GitHub.
In 2020, GitHub announced the launch of its India-based subsidiary, GitHub India Private Limited, to increase its presence in the country and attract more developers and enterprise customers. The platform has also made its developer platform for startups available in India, offering up to 20 seats of Enterprise free for one year, along with support and guidance from GitHub technical experts.
GitHub achieves 10 Million developers milestone
This growth in India is not only important for GitHub, but also for its parent company, Microsoft. In 2018, Microsoft acquired the platform for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. The acquisition allows Microsoft to better integrate with the software development sphere and use GitHub’s data to develop a new AI-powered pair programmer called Copilot.
GitHub’s user numbers are up from 73 million in 2021 and 40 million in 2019, which was a year after Microsoft acquired it for $7.5 billion, with 28 million users, and gained cross-platform desktop development framework Electron.
If the platform for developers 100 million users are all active developers, it perhaps reflects how the nature of software development is changing.
During a conference call discussing the company’s financial results for the second quarter, Nadella reassured investors that despite declining sales of PCs and Windows, as well as slowing growth in cloud revenue, the company was still seeing success thanks to its focus on AI. He highlighted GitHub Copilot as a particularly successful example, noting that it had attracted a large number of users since its launch and had been used by one million people. Additionally, he mentioned that the service had been expanded with new features such as the ability to use voice commands, and that it was now also available for businesses.
Furthermore, GitHub has reached a major milestone, announcing that 100 million developers are now using the platform. This is a significant increase from the 3 million users the platform had 10 years ago, and the 28 million users when it was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion five years ago.
This growth is even more impressive when you consider that just three months ago, GitHub reported that it had over 90 million users. The platform has come a long way since its launch in 2008 and now serves as the go-to hosting service for millions of open source and proprietary software projects. It allows developers to collaborate on shared codebases from various locations, making it a vital tool for many in the tech industry.
With revenue in the Indian software market projected to reach $7.72 billion in 2023 and an annual compound annual growth rate of 11.67% during 2023-2027, it is clear that the Indian market presents a huge opportunity for GitHub. The platform’s partnership with major venture capital, accelerator, and startup support organizations also bodes well for its future in the country.
