With a target to develop software skills among pupils, IT giant IBM announced that it will set up 75 new Centers of Excellence (CoE) at engineering colleges across 60 cities in the country during 2010.

In a declaration, Himanshu Goyal, IBM India/South Asia Country Manager (Academic Initiative, Developer Works and Globalisation) stated, "Apart from providing training, certification and software which is free of charge to these colleges, IBM plans to take the CoEs to the next logical level of converting them into Incubation Centers, to bolster software skills and ensure industry-ready professionals."

The company had established 75 such CoEs across India during the last year.

The company's latest declaration will take the total number of CoEs to 150 by the end of this year.

To be spread across 20 Indian states, these new CoEs will be chosen from the top 300 engineering colleges in the country.

IBM's Academic Initiative, under which these CoEs are being launched, has been producing nearly 10,000 certified candidates from the various CoEs. This number is expected to increase by 6,000 certified candidates in 2010, the company said. (With Inputs from Agencies)