A big-ticket investment comes to India with Google announcing that it plans to invest $10 billion in India over the next 5-7 years as the search giant looks to expand its presence in the key overseas market.
Sundar-Pichai, the chief executive of Google, today unveiled Google for India Digitization Fund which would be its vehicle to invest in India.
“We’ll do this through a mix of equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments. This is a reflection of our confidence in the future of India and its digital economy,” he said at the company’s annual event focussed on India.Investment would focus on four key areas important for India’s digitization:
- Affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language;
- Building new products and services that are deeply relevant to India’s unique needs;
- Empowering businesses s they continue or embark on their digital transformation;
- Leveraging technology and Artificial Intelligence for social good, in areas like health, education and agriculture
Google has a huge presence in India through its search engine, YouTube and Android spread over 500 million Indians online today.
“There’s still ore work to do in order to make the internet affordable and useful for a billion Indians from improving voice input and computing for all of India’s languages, to inspiring and supporting a whole new generation of entrepreneurs,” said Pichai.
Facebook, which rivals with Google and Amazon in India, made a $7 billion investment in Reliance, Jio platforms, the top telecom operator in India in April, set to digitize 60 million kirana stores in the country.
During his visit to India earlier this year, Jeff Bezos said Amazon plans to invest an additional $1 billion to India, making the company’s commitment to India to $6.5 billion.
