Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd. has announced that Project Shiksha, the company's initiative to accelerate IT literacy amongst government school teachers and students in India, has trained 2,00,000 teachers till date. Launched in India in December 2003 by Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, Project Shiksha had a target of reaching out to 80,000 teachers by December 2008, a period of five years.

Under project Shiksha, run in partnership with state governments, Microsoft India currently has MoUs with 10 states for 11 academies, offering a spectrum of education resources, including tools, programs, and practices with an aim to promote the use of IT in education. The 11 IT Academies span across Uttaranchal (Dehradun), Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad), Karnataka (Gulbarga, Dharwad, Bangalore), Maharashtra (Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad), Rajasthan (Jaipur), Tamil Nadu (Chennai) and Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal) The project has, impacted 10 million students across the country.

Commenting on the achievement of the initiative, Karan Bajwa, Country Head, Public Sector, Microsoft India, said, "We believe that education is a crucial area for India's continued growth. The investment made in it over the years is what has propelled India's growth in the knowledge economy; and it is critical that we continue to focus on education. In our endeavor to partner with India in its journey towards socio economic growth, we've chosen education as one of the focus areas – and Project Shiksha is a key constituent of this effort. We have just completed training 200,000 teachers – in the process impacting 10 million students' lives – and the numbers continue to grow every day. It's not just about numbers though. Every single time we are able to help a teacher retain a child's interest or pull a student back into the classroom, we believe that we achieve some part of India's dream."