Paytm launches virtual incubator to promote 'Build for India' initiative
Paytm on Tuesday announced the launch of its ‘Indian Open Source Project Incubator’, where professionals and students can build open source-based solutions, and share these projects with the global developer community.
The launch is in line with the company’s ‘Build for India’ initiative to promote ‘building and sharing’ culture among developers in the country. It will focus on areas of open source projects in the field of Education, Digital Lifestyle, and Financial Inclusion, including new-age technologies like Machine Learning, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.
According to a statement released by the company, the virtual incubator will aim to find developers who can use technology and design to build world-class solutions. Further, the company said that as part of the incubator programme, Paytm will make its premises available for mentoring, meet-ups, technology and design support from time to time.
Moreover, outstanding external contributors to the open source project will be awarded ‘Paytm Scholar’ certificates with the opportunity to join the company.
In order to engage with students and get them to contribute to open source projects, Paytm plans to conduct hackathons, bootcamps, meet-ups, and monitoring sessions while partnering with around 20 institutions.
Speaking on the initiative, Deepak Abbot, Senior Vice President at Paytm, said:
"In our country, we use a lot of open source projects but do not contribute back enough to the developer community. We aim at correcting this by promoting new open source projects developed from India. We will also create communities around these projects to maintain them. With the Open Source Project Incubator, Paytm aims to give back to the developer community.”
Just last week, Paytm announced it had upgraded from its cashback strategy and introduced 'Paytm Loyalty Points', which customers can earn from multiple activities within its ecosystem.
The company had said that the cashback offers given to customers on the platform will be accumulated as ‘Paytm Loyalty Points’, and can be redeemed across online platforms as well as across its five million merchant network on the platform.