Google commits $10 billion towards India's digitisation fund, backing fintech and businesses

Internet giant Google is investing $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, US and around world.

Pichai met Prime Minister Modi here on Friday and also anunced opening of Google’s global fintech operation centre in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in Gandhinagar.

“It was an hour to meet Prime Minister Modi during historic visit to US. We shared with Prime Minister that Google is investing $10 billion in India's digitisation fund,” Pichai said.

“We are anuncing opening of our global fintech operation centre in GIFT City, Gujarat. PM’s vision for Digital India was way ahead of his time I w see it as a blueprint that or countries are looking to do," he added.

“Google today anunced that it will open a Google Fintech Global Operations Center in GIFT City, Gujarat, with teams working on specialised operations supporting GPay and or 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, US and around world,” spokesperson said after meeting between Pichai and Prime Minister.

Google has been operating in India since 2004, with offices in five key cities across country with thousands of talented employees. We currently have offices in Bangalore (Bengaluru), Hyderabad, Gurgaon - Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Pune, spokesperson said.

In 2020, deepening its commitment to India and a reflection of its confidence in India’s growing role in global techlogy arena, Google anunced Google for India Digitisation fund, a commitment to invest $10 billion (approximately Rs 75,000 crores) focussing on four areas.

First, enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in ir own langu. Second, building new services that are relevant to India’s unique needs. Third, empowering businesses as y embark on digital transformation. Fourth, leveraging techlogy and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for social good.

Towards end of last year, Google also anunced support for Early St Startups with a particular focus on women-led startups under India Digitisation fund.

Using AI to furr India’s digital transformation journey, Google AI Research Center in Bengaluru is building models to support over 100 Indian langus, and working with 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 invative cloud techlogies 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 ors are today benefiting from Google Cloud and AI offerings. To support this growing demand, Google Cloud w has 2 cloud regions in Delhi NCR and Mumbai respectively, a media release said.