Google to invest $10 bn in India

Google has announced to invest $10 billion to help gear up India’s transition to a digital economy in the next five to seven years, reports AP.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google, said the project will focus on building products that are relevant to India’s needs and empowering businesses for their “digital transformation”.

“Our goal is to ensure India not only benefits from the next wave of innovation, but leads it,” Pichai said in a digital keynote at a Google for India event on Monday (July 13).

The tech giant also declared to invest $1 million to support digital education in India. The fund aims at enabling 1 million teachers of 22,000 Indian schools across the country to use Google services that can facilitate online learning.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, styles himself as a leader in touch with technology, has made digitisation a major priority for India and envisions a “Digital India”.

Modi who has nearly 60 million followers on Twitter, wrote that he and Pichai met and discussed a wide range of subjects, “particularly leveraging the power of technology to transform the lives of India’s farmers, youngsters and entrepreneurs.”

“I was delighted to know more about the efforts of @Google in several sectors, be it in education, learning, @_DigitalIndia, furthering digital payments and more,” he said.

(Source: UNB)