Starting from this year, software giant Microsoft Corporation will hire students directly from India's premium colleges to work at its campus in Redmond, US. Hitherto, only its subsidiary Microsoft Corporation India had been hiring from colleges.

Chennai-based Anna University will be one of the first universities where Microsoft would look to hire for its research and development facilities, according to Mr S. Somasegar, Senior Vice-President, Developer Division of Microsoft Corporation, and an alma mater of the university.

Microsoft, which set up its India operations in 1990, has nearly 5,300 people working in the country. It has six business units -- marketing, development centre, a global technology centre, Microsoft IT, Microsoft Global Services India and Microsoft Research – representing the complete Microsoft product lifecycle.

I-Spark

Mr Somasegar was at the university to launch the company's I-Spark programme that will provide nearly 5.7 lakh students of Anna University access to Microsoft's latest software tools. This is likely to ‘spark' innovation and entrepreneurship among the students. I-Spark comprises an ‘innovative platform' that acts as a hub for collaboration amongst colleges, university, government/quasi-government bodies, industry bodies and partners, said Mr Somasegar.

So far, nearly 50,000 students have benefited from the programme across India, he told newspersons.

Students will get a special identity number of all the 500-member engineering colleges of Anna University. From the portal www.dreamspark.com students can access developer software of Microsoft that can be downloaded free of charge.

As part of the BizSpark programme, over 1,300 Indian start-up companies have been provided professional software at no charge, he said.

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