Google said that it’ll invest more than ₹75,000 crores ($10 billion) over the next five to seven years. The company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, said that money will be divided into investment equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure, and ecosystem investments.
Investments will focus on four main areas:
- Information access in Indian languages
- Building products for the Indian market
- Empowering local businesses
- Leveraging AI for good in areas such as agriculture and education.
Earlier today, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had a call with Pichai to discuss post-COVID investments and digital transformation.
This morning, had an extremely fruitful interaction with @sundarpichai. We spoke on a wide range of subjects, particularly leveraging the power of technology to transform the lives of India’s farmers, youngsters and entrepreneurs. pic.twitter.com/IS9W24zZxs
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 13, 2020
Pichai said that he’s looking forward to working alongside Modi:
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As we make these investments, we look forward to working alongside Prime Minister Modi and the Indian government, as well as Indian businesses of all sizes to realize our shared vision for a Digital India.
In the past, Google’s investment arm has invested in Indian startups such as real-estate marketplace Commonfloor and hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo.
India has been a leading country in terms of the number of users for Google products such as Search, Android, and YouTube.
Google’s fund is one of the biggest investment by a US-based company in India. Earlier this year, Amazon said it’ll invest $1 billion in small business in the country by 2025. In April, Facebook invested $5.7 billion in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms in exchange for a 9.9% stake.
The company noted that India has now more than 500 million internet users. The search giant also highlighted its efforts to spread information related to the coronavirus.
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