"We're making a version of Hangman using images ," says 21-year-old Sumit Mulchandani. Sumit and his classmates Akshay Sharma and Akash Giri are from the Vellore Institute of Technology and were in the city to participate in a app-a-thon held last week at KTPO in Whitefield, Bangalore. The trio was huddled around laptops as they pounded away on a development program. "We've already built this app for the Windows Phone," said a proud Sumit. "We are trying to tweak it so that it works as well on the larger canvas provided by Windows 8."

Microsoft, Blackberry, Yahoo, Facebook and Samsung are among those trying to tap into Indian developers . And increasingly, "Catch them young" is the motto.

Sumit, Akshay and Akash are three of the beneficiaries of Microsoft's big push towards getting more and more students to work with its development tools. Microsoft is acutely aware that it lags behind tablet market leader Apple in terms of the sheer number of applications available for the platform. Unlike competing tablet operating systems iOS and Android, Microsoft's strategy is "PC down" versus "Mobile Up" . It's logical , considering that the PC platform has many more applications than the Windows mobile platform. But it remains to be seen whether those applications can be made Windows 8 and tablet compatible fast enough.

Yahoo has been hosting hackathons in Bangalore to get developers to use their technology to develop applications. They hosted their fifth edition of the event in Bangalore in August. "Bangalore's hacks are always looked forward to because of the amount of innovation they bring," Arunav Sinha, head of corporate communications for Yahoo, had said during the event. The event saw 730 developers, who submitted an impressive 157 hacks at the end of a 24-hour coding session.

"Last year (at Yahoo's hackathon), the theme was the web, but this year it was mobile devices. Everyone is trying to come up with an app that can combine social and mobile elements," said Sandeep Bhaskar of Ideaphone, a startup that developed a carpooling app.

Facebook hosted "World Hack" in Bangalore earlier this month. The event saw about 175 developers creating apps for Facebook. "It's surprising we weren't here earlier," said Bear Douglas, developer advocate for Facebook. Bear was coordinating the event and making sure that the coders were getting information on Facebook's technologies, permissions and APIs "We had some issues with our beta version when it came to permissions , but we got it sorted out here at the event," says Vishnu Govind, a developer at the event who was working on an app which would give a better social stratification of your friends on Facebook.

Douglas said that the India leg of World Hack generated a lot of interest in Android and Web based applications for Facebook. The US leg saw developments on iOS platforms.

Microsoft's New England Research and Development Center (NERD) hosted a paid 12-week internship program between June to August this year. Selected interns underwent a boot camp, mentoring and training, and produced six programs at the end of their training, including a Fedex package tracking program, an alarm clock and a game that involves penguins and aircraft.

The VIT team is a beneficiary of a Microsoft program called Dreamspark. Dreamspark is a program that's open to students, teachers and educational institutions.

At KPTO, Mayra Dolos was hunched over her laptop, working on a video streaming application. Mayra is from Pune. She is the kind of enthusiast that any software company would love. "I'm a huge fan of Microsoft. I was a Microsoft Student Partner," she says proudly. "I went through a rigorous selection process - there were four levels of selection and now I'm spreading the message of Microsoft Technologies," she says with evangelical fervour.

Her partner, Mandar Kulkarni nods. He was working on a game called Tilt - using motion sensors. "I gave up a better paying job with Oracle Financials so that I could work with Microsoft Technologies," he says. Mayra nods. She gave up a better paying job with Sears to work with Microsoft.