IBM senior researcher Ashish Verma (left) explains his new speech software to the director of IBM-India Research Lab, Daniel Dias, in Delhi on Thursday. The web-based technology for call centres evaluates grammar, pronunciation, comprehension and other spoken-language skills, and provides detailed scores for each category. (AP)

Chennai, Nov. 2: Infotech major IBM will be training teachers at 30 municipal schools in a social initiative as it prepares to triple its investments in India.

Twenty of these schools are in Chennai, where the US company will open its fourth software development facility by early 2007. The other 10 are in Hyderabad, a rising infotech hub.

IBM, which launched the project jointly with the Chennai Municipal Corporation here today, will provide the hardware to these schools. A group of selected teachers, guided by IBM India’s research experts and consultants, will be exposed to new software tools and online teaching methods.

“The Re-inventing Education Programme will focus on professional development and training for teachers to help them improve learning in mathematics and science subjects for children in classes VI to X,” IBM Foundation president Stanley Litow told reporters.

He said the programme was inspired by the success of similar initiatives in China, Brazil and Singapore. The Hyderabad arm of the project would be launched soon.

The company’s investments in India are set to rise from the current $2 billion (about Rs 9,000 crore) to $6 billion in the next three years, IBM India managing director Shanker Annaswamy said.

Three decades ago, like Coca-Cola, the company had wound up its Indian operations with anti-US feelings running high in the country.

In 1977, the Janata Party government’s industries minister, George Fernandes, had asked IBM to dilute its stake, reducing its 100 per cent American ownership to a figure below 74 per cent. The company refused and moved out of India.

Litow said the IBM Foundation had in the past 10 years spent $100 million (about Rs 450 crore) under its teacher training initiative in countries like China, Singapore and Brazil. “We are now training 100,000 teachers in China to improve the quality of teaching.”

The teachers trained in Chennai and Hyderabad over the next two years would later train other teachers in their states.

The package includes a “smart kids” programme for underprivileged children aged three to seven, for which the company has developed a special computer, Litow added.

Earlier, Litow and Annaswamy met Union telecommunications and information technology minister Dayanidhi Maran and explained the initiative to him.