The Chief Executive Officer of Google, Sundar Pichai, on Monday announced ‘GoogleforIndia Digitization’ fund worth $10 billion. The Indian-American CEO of Google and Alphabet Inc. announced this in the sixth annual edition of the “Google for India” virtual event. Later, he also went on to twitter to state the same.
Today at #GoogleForIndia we announced a new $10B digitization fund to help accelerate India’s digital economy. We’re proud to support PM @narendramodi’s vision for Digital India – many thanks to Minister @rsprasad & Minister @DrRPNishank for joining us. https://t.co/H0EUFYSD1q
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) July 13, 2020
Moneycontrol.com reports that under the fund, over Rs. 75000 crore would be invested in various avenues in India over the course of seven years.It is also reported that the investments would be done through a mix of equity investments, partnerships and operational infrastructures in ecosystem investments.
Pichai also added that the fund would be utilised in investments towards Indian innovation and development of infrastructure. “Want India to not only benefit from the next wave of innovation, but to lead it”, he said.
He also laid out four key focus areas of investment. These areas include affordable access to Indian languages, bringing innovation in products and services in India, business empowerment and introduction of Artificial Intelligence in several areas such as agriculture.
This announcement comes after the virtual meeting that was held this morning between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Google CEO.
“This morning, had an extremely fruitful interaction with Sundar Pichai. We spoke on a wide range of subjects, particularly leveraging power of technology to transform the lives of India’s farmers, youth and entrepreneurs”, tweeted PM Modi.
This morning, had an extremely fruitful interaction with @sundarpichai. 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. pic.twitter.com/IS9W24zZxs
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 13, 2020
PM Modi also stated that apart from these issues, both of them also talked about how pandemic is shaping a new work culture across the globe. They also spoke about the overall effect of the pandemic on areas like sports. Both of them also emphasized on the importance of data security and cyber safety in their conversation.
