New Delhi, Apr 2 (IANS): In a bid to prepare an industry-ready workforce for the Indian smartphone industry, 19 key component makers have trained a batch of 91 candidates from India and Taiwan during the smartphone design training programme organised by fabless semiconductor company MediaTek.

The nine-week training programme was held in both the countries where the shortlisted candidates from smartphone brands like Lava, Micromax, Karbonn, Intex, Panasonic, Reliance, Samsung, Videocon and Smatron, etc, participated in theory sessions in India and hands-on training in Taiwan, MediaTek said on Monday.

The training programme was created in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Indian Cellular Association (ICA).

The closing ceremony of the training programme was held at the MediaTek headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan on Monday.

"The programme is focused on closing the gap for demand of smartphone design talent in the market. With such efforts, both Indian and global handset makers in India won't have to look anywhere else for design capabilities," said Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY.

Grant Kuo, India Managing Director at MediaTek, acknowledged the Indian engineers' willingness to participate in the second smartphone design training programme.