Google commits $10b for India digitization effort

Google CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured) announced the vehicle during a webcast with Indian government leaders. It will be deployed over the next five to seven years. Pichai remarked the motivation for the fund lies in the observation that several digital solutions pioneered in the country have since been rolled out around the world.   

Investments will concentrate on improving access to information via local languages, empowering the digitization efforts of micro-businesses, building India-specific products and services, and developing artificial intelligence-enabled solutions for health, education and agriculture needs.

CapitalG, Google's corporate venture arm that focuses on growth equity investments, has been active in the country since 2015. According to AVCJ Research, it has stakes in non-bank lender Aye Finance, doctor search portal Practo, online auto marketplace CarDekho and cloud-based customer service software provider Freshworks. Last year, Google also invested in app-based concierge service provider Dunzo.

Apart from its core free legacy products like Search, Chrome, Maps, YouTube and Gmail, Google is also well-known in India as the operator of the Google Pay app, which leverages the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), a free payment gateway for interbank transactions. According to official statistics, 1.3 billion retail transactions comprising 53% of digital payments went through the UPI network in June. Since its launch in 2017, Google Pay has become the most popular UPI-based payment app.

Google-owned Android, which powers the operating system for most smart phones in India, is also the primary environment for app-based software development. In addition, Google has interests in hardware. Pixel, its smart phone, is considered an aspirational buy among Indians but low-cost competitors from China like BBK Electronics (owner of the Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus brands) and Xiaomi cater to the masses.

Another Google executive remarked that the company would look to partner with manufacturers to build low-cost devices that enable wider internet access in India. 

Last year, the US company finished the construction of a data center in Mumbai. Another is planned for New Delhi. Google has offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Gurgaon, a suburban town near New Delhi.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Fundraising
• Expansion
• Early-stage
• Technology
• India
• CapitalG
• TMT