MUMBAI - The unmistakable chatter of typewriters outside courthouses and government offices will soon fall silent in India's financial capital Mumbai as stenography colleges on Friday hold their final manual exams.

The roughly 3,500 institutes teaching the antiquated ways of the typewriter across Maharashtra state will be phased out as India pushes ahead with a drive to digitize the economy.

"It is absolutely the end of an era as typewriters bite the dust due to technological innovation," said Ashok Abhyankar, who runs a shorthand and typewriting institute in Mumbai.