Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced that Google will be investing at least USD$10 billion over the next 5 to 7 years for India’s Digitization Fund in order to help accelerate India’s digital economy.

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, vision for Digital India, has made huge progress in getting a billion Indians online. Low-cost smartphones with affordable data and a world-class telecom infrastructure, has paved the way for new opportunities.

Since 2004, Google opened its first offices in Hydebrad and Bangalore, and has been a proud partner of India’s digitization journey since 2004.  Now with this Google For India Digitization Fund, Google will try to achieve a lot through equity investments, partnerships and operational infrastructure and ecosystem investments.

The investments will focus on:

• First, enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language, whether it’s Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or any other
• Second, building new products and services that are deeply relevant to India’s unique needs
• Third, empowering businesses as they continue or embark on their digital transformation
• Fourth, leveraging technology and AI for social good, in areas like health, education, and agriculture

According to TechCrunch, India is a key overseas market for Google, where its services have made amazing inroads among the nation’s 1.3 billion people. Now with more restrictions on Chinese led investments and bans on Chinese apps such as TikTok, there is now massive untapped potential for American companies.

“There’s still more work to do in order to make the internet affordable and useful for a billion Indians…from improving voice input and computing for all of India’s languages, to inspiring and supporting a whole new generation of entrepreneurs,” said India-born Pichai.

As reported earlier in other publications as well, Facebook has already made a USD$5.7 billion investment in Reliance Jio Platforms, and aims to digitize 60 million small businesses in the country.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon has also invested USD$6.5 billion so far into India focused ventures and all of this bodes well for the country’s digital aspirations as the government takes a harder line on China.

As reported by the Economic Times, Sundar Pichai, at the age of 48, heads Alphabet Inc, with a market cap of USD$1.5 trillion, has big plans for India. In an interview with the publication, he expects a large portion of their investments to actually go into investing in Indian companies.

Pichai is very enthusiastic about the local app ecosystem in India, and Google is committed to it. “We are trying to develop apps in India…we want to invest in companies that are doing that…we are excited by that vision and want to help play a small role in accelerating that trend,” he said.

He has always felt that India is a unique opportunity. Pichai believes in the vision for Digital India that was laid out by Prime Minister Modi, and he does believe that Google as a company will be well suited to the digitization journey as a whole.

Sanjay Gupta, the head of Google in India, said the company’s new $10 billion commitment to India today would shape the future of many of its products and services in the country. “We are recommitting ourselves to partner deeply and support India in becoming a truly digital nation,” he said.

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About the author

Anil Prabha

Editor In Chief

Anil started his career in journalism all the way back in 2003. After traversing the sphere of editorial, corporate communications and advertising, he has now come full circle and is back in the world of journalism. He believes in the power of the written word, and its ability to enthrall, delight and inform the reader.