BENGALURU/NEW DELHI: Google will pump in $10 billion (around Rs 75,000 crore) in India over the next 5-7 years. The money will be used to invest in local companies and build more localised products. It’s the largest commitment by a global technology major to the country. The investment — through what it calls Google For India Digitization Fund — follows commitments made by other US tech majors Facebook and Amazon this year.
“We’ll do this through a mix of equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments,” said Google’s Madurai-born CEO Sundar Pichai through a video address. Its investment is focused in four areas — (i) affordable access to information in local languages; (ii) building new products for India; (iii) digitising businesses; and (iv) applying technology and artificial intelligence in health, education and agriculture.
Pichai had an interaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Google’s announcement was attended by Union communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.
“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,” Modi tweeted after his interaction with Pichai where the importance of d