Google will set up its global fintech operation centre at GIFT City in Gujarat, its CEO Sundar Pichai said after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sundar Pichai also said that his company continues to invest in India though its USD 10 billion (approx. Rs. 81,980 crore) India Digitisation Fund.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting the US from 21st to 24th June 2023 at the invitation of President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
After Sundar Pichai, the prime minister at an interaction with top CEOs also met Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and AMD CEO Lisa Su, among many others.
Sundar Pichai said :
“Today we are announcing the opening of our global fintech operations centre in GIFT City, Gujarat. It will cement India’s fintech leadership, thanks to UPI, and Aadhaar. We are going to build on that foundation and take it globally,”.
He said it is exciting to see the progress that the country has made, particularly around the vision of Digital India and the economic opportunity.
Sundar Pichai said :
“I met the prime minister in December, and we continued our conversation. We shared that Google is investing USD 10 billion in the India digitisation fund and we are continuing to invest through that, including in companies working on artificial intelligence. As part of that, we have a 100-language initiative. We are bringing bot to more Indian languages very soon,”.
He said that the prime minister’s vision for Digital India was ahead of its time.
Sundar Pichai said :
“I now see it as a blueprint that other countries are looking to do so,” Pichai said.
Ministry of external affairs in a tweet said Prime Minister Modi invited Sundar Pichai to explore further avenues of collaboration in the domains of artificial intelligence, fintech, and cybersecurity products and services, as well as mobile device manufacturing in India.
They also discuss collaboration between Google and academic institutions in India to promote research and development, and skill development, as per ministry.
In July 2020, Google had announce plans to invest USD 10 billion in India over next five to seven years as the search giant looks to help accelerate adoption of digital services in the key overseas market.
During his visit to India in December 2022, Sundar Pichai had announce that a part of the India Digitisation Fund (IDF) is increasingly focusing on startups from India and one-fourth amount of USD 300 million from the fund will be invest in entities that are led by women.
Google had announce a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru to collect speech data from 773 districts across India to fine-tune its language translation and search technology.
The Google has announce a grant of USD 1 million (approx. Rs. 8,300 crore) to set up India’s first responsible artificial intelligence centre at IIT Madras and a USD 1 million grant via Google.Org to Wadhwani AI towards using advance technology for better agricultural outcomes.
