Google investing USD 10 billion in India’s digitisation fund: Pichai tells PM Modi

Internet giant Google is investing USD 10 billion in India’s digitisation fund, its CEO Sundar Pichai has told Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a step that will recognise India’s leadership on fintech and will support small and large businesses in India, the US and around the world.

Pichai met Prime Minister Modi here on Friday and also announced the opening of Google’s global fintech operation centre in the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in Gandhinagar. “It was an honour to meet Prime Minister Modi during the historic visit to the US. We shared with the Prime Minister that Google is investing USD 10 billion in India’s digitisation fund,” Pichai said.

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“We are announcing the opening of our global fintech operation centre in GIFT City, Gujarat. PM’s vision for Digital India was way ahead of his time I now see it as a blueprint that other countries are looking to do,” he added. “Google today announced that it will open a Google Fintech Global Operations Center in GIFT City, Gujarat, with teams working on specialised operations supporting GPay and other product operations at Google,” a Google spokesperson told PTI. “This recognises India’s leadership on fintech and will support small and large businesses in India, the US and around the world,” the spokesperson said after the meeting between Pichai and the Prime Minister.

Google has been operating in India since 2004, with offices in five key cities across the country with thousands of talented employees. We currently have offices in Bangalore (Bengaluru), Hyderabad, Gurgaon – Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Pune, the spokesperson said. In 2020, deepening its commitment to India and a reflection of its confidence in India’s growing role in the global technology arena, Google announced the Google for India Digitisation fund, a commitment to invest USD 10 billion (approximately Rs 75,000 crores) focussing on four areas. First, enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language. Second, building new services that are relevant to India’s unique needs. Third, empowering businesses as they embark on digital transformation. Fourth, leveraging technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for social good.

Towards the end of last year, Google also announced support for Early Stage Startups with a particular focus on women-led startups under the India Digitisation fund. Using AI to further India’s digital transformation journey, Google AI Research Center in Bengaluru is building models to support over 100 Indian languages, and working with the Indian Institute of Science to support open sourcing of speech data through India’s Bhashini project. It has also partnered with IIT Madras to establish a multidisciplinary Center for Responsible AI. With a focus to support businesses and governments to run on Cloud, Google Cloud has been playing a pivotal role in bringing innovative cloud technologies to India and being a part of India’s digital transformation journey.

India’s biggest enterprises and unicorns like Jio, Adani, Mahindra Group, Sharechat, HDFC Bank, Glance Roposo and hundreds of others are today benefiting from Google Cloud and AI offerings. To support this growing demand, Google Cloud now has 2 cloud regions in Delhi NCR and Mumbai respectively, a media release said.