On Tuesday, Meta announced that it would contribute $1 million through the XR Open Source (XROS) fellowship programme to 100 Indian developers working on XR (extended reality) technologies for the metaverse’s future. Developer fellowships with a stipend and mentoring will be available through the FICCI-managed XROS initiative. The National e-Governance Division, a project of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, will be the program’s technical partner (MeitY).
“The metaverse won’t be built by one company alone. Through programmes like XR Open Source, we will support Indian developers working on these exciting technologies,” said Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs, Meta.
The programme will lay the foundation for cost-effective, practical, and precisely Indian-tuned regional language localised solutions. The XR Open-Source programme is Meta’s second effort in India to support the developer community for immersive technologies and broaden the open ecosystem that will enable the development of the metaverse.
One of the earlier open-source initiatives that Meta backed and launched was No Language Left Behind (NLLB), a single multilingual AI model that spans 200 low resource languages, including 25 Indian languages.
A part of Meta’s global XR Programmes and Research Money, which the company announced earlier this year will give a $2 million fund for the XR Startup programme in collaboration with MeitY Startup Hub, is the XROS initiative.
“The vision for India’s techade can only be achieved when the young developers and start-ups, including those from tier 2 and 3 cities, contribute to enabling future technologies like XR in the metaverse,” said professor Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser to the government.
“The programme will provide the necessary impetus towards fueling the growth of investments in future technologies in line with the government’s vision for making India a trillion-dollar economy by 2025,” said Devin Narang, FICCI Committee Member and Country Head-India, Sindicatum Renewable Energy.
Over the next three years, Meta will work with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to provide immersive technology to more than 10 million students and 1 million teachers.
