The sixth season of Google was an exclusive for India event and the first one to be a virtual one via Google keynote. Google is all prepared to host its sixth annual event and due to the pandemic this will be the very first virtual event. The main aim of this event is to digitalize India in the coming future. According to Google, this will help unlock the new opportunities in India as it heads into the new digital- first future.

Google for India brought by Sundar Pichai is about an investment of $10 billion. These funds will be a complimentary step to the vision of PM Narendra Modi of digital India. These funds primarily focus on digitalizing the economy, creating new products and services and enhancing the use of AI and technology in rural areas primarily focusing on education, health sectors and more.

India being the second largest manufacturer of mobile devices, Google aims to use this at an advantage and make digital. It aims to manufacture and sell cost effective smart phones which will be affordable by rural areas of the country.

Investments:

Google on Monday has announced that it will invest $10 billion in India over the coming five to seven years. The chief executive of Google, Sundar Pichai, also unveiled Google for India digitization fund. The company will be making investments in India through the digitization fund. He also mentioned as to in what different kinds of investments the company would undertake. It will be a mix of equity investments, partnerships, infrastructure and operational investments. ‘This reflects the confidence the company has on India and its digital economy’ Sundar Pichai.

The focus of investments will be in different areas. Such as:

1. The first and foremost investment would be in enabling affordable access to information for every India in their native language, be it Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati or any other.
2. The second will be building new products and services that are related to India’s culture and needs.
3. Third most investment will cover up businesses that continue to embark on their digital transformation. Google plans on empowering such businesses.
4. The fourth would be investing in Technologies in areas like education, health, agriculture to name a few.

India has a very large market for Google. Most of the products and services such as search, YouTube have made inroads with the online population of the country. An approximate of 500 million people in India are online and just over 450 million smartphones and thoroughly active in the country. Therefore, this highly indicates that investing in a country where almost half of billion people are engaged online will surely benefit the country.

The head of marketing for Google, Sapna Chadha had announced Google partnership with Central Board of Secondary Education. This partnership will clearly help around 1 million teachers across 22k India schools to help deliver learning that combines classroom learning as well as online learning with the use of tools like GSuite, Google classroom for free. In other words, Google’s collaboration with CBSE will enable them to blend online training with an ambiance of real classroom. In addition to this, Google aims to provide students with less or no resources with education facility. $1 million by Google.org will be dedicated to Kaivalya Education Foundation for global distance learning fund. Over 700k teachers will be trained by Kaivalya Education Foundation that will work with Central Square Foundation and Teacher App. This will train teachers to deliver through virtual education for students to continue learning at home. It also adds to skill low income communities that might not have access to devices and internet.

Digitalizing Small Businesses:

In this era of digitization all kinds of businesses be it small or medium need to be digitized. Digital marketing services in Hyderabad have grown drastically. The 28 million small and medium businesses have been now discoverable on Google maps and search. Google pay plays a huge part in India’s success during the lockdown. It has helped families to have access to essential needs in the pandemic.

The announcement by Google also comes at a time when India has closed its doors to China and its connected firms. Recently, India has banned over 49 applications from China that include Tiktok, Shein, Alibaba, Wechat to mention a few. This makes some industry fraternity believe that it has reduced competition for developing applications.

Americans are trying their every effort to gain foothold in India regarding technology as these American technology giants have been shut out from doing business in China. Therefore they are doing all efforts to be the technology giants for India. Previously Google has backed up a few start-ups in India that include Bangalore-headquartered hyper-local delivery service Dunzo. Google was also in talks with Vodafone for a stake of 5%. This is one of the biggest telecom company in India.

Company’s $10 billion commitment to India today will surely shape the future of the country along with Google’s products and services. This was said by Sanjay Gupta, head of Google in India.

“We are recommitting ourselves to partner deeply and support India in becoming a truly digital nation,” he said.

Google aims for financial strength: