Directi, the leading internet products company, today announced the formal launch of CodeChef – India’s largest and only non-commercial, online programming competition. CodeChef provides a platform for practice, competition and improvement for student and professional software developers across India.

Sharing his views at the launch, Mr. Bhavin Turakhia, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Directi said, “In the last few years while the engineering colleges have mushroomed all over the country, the curriculum in most colleges does not truly recreate real world scenarios and allow budding software developers to collaborate with professionals.”

The IT-BPO sector over the last decade has been known as a high-growth industry contributing close to 5.8% of India’s GDP and employing over two million people. In spite of such a large IT talent pool, India has yet to develop a globally recognized software products company of the size and scale of a Google or Facebook.

Out of all students in the top 100 tech universities globally only 0.67% are educated within India. This is a significantly small percentage considering that India houses one-sixth of the world’s population.

Mr. Turakhia further added, “We designed CodeChef as an initiative to supplement the Indian education system by enabling knowledge sharing, encouraging collaboration and driving learning through competition. We are determined to bridge the gap and help aspiring software developers in India morph into highly talented professionals.”

Since CodeChef’s inception five months back, more than 250,000 individuals have visited the website and over 10,000 users have submitted their code. Featuring monthly contests in more than 35 different programming languages, CodeChef also has big prizes. Winners of each contest can win prizes of up to Rs. 50,000, recognition from their peers and an invitation to compete at the CodeChef Cup, an in-person competition scheduled for the end of the year.

In addition to practice problems and monthly contests CodeChef also works with students and professionals through its campus chapters and TechTalks programs. CodeChef TechTalks promote technical education and knowledge sharing by making internationally renowned speakers accessible to the best software professionals in India. The next series of talks will be held in Mumbai on Sept 10th, Hyderabad on Sept 11th and Bangalore on Sept 12th.

For more information please visit (www.CodeChef.com)