India-born Sundar Pichai is on his first visit to key market India since he took over as Google CEO... [+]
Google will hire more engineers, ramp up existing campuses, open a “huge” new campus in Hyderabad and expand its R&D facility in Bangalore, its India-born CEO Sundar Pichai said at a Google India event in New Delhi today. Pichai is on his first visit to his native country after taking over as CEO in August this year.
India is a key driver for Google’s growth and its venture arm, Google Capital, will invest $20 million in Indian startups working on crowd computing, Pichai said. It will hire more engineers in its Hyderabad facility to make for-India products.
India is a vital market for global technology firms like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft whose CEOs have made a beeline for the country in recent months. The country’s internet base is rocketing because of rapid adoption of smartphones. There will be an estimated 400 million-plus internet users by this year-end as India overtakes the United States to become the world’s second-largest internet market. Even more enticing is the large, yet-untapped chunk of the country’s 1.2 billion people. Additionally, the government has launched a massive Digital India program to take technology to India’s rural masses that will further drive up technology adoption.
“India is at the center of a digital revolution today, with millions of Indians getting online every month. India has always been key for Google and we continue to work towards evolving our product offerings for the unique needs of our users,” Google said earlier in a media note.
By 2016, India is to have more Android users than the United States, Pichai said. The company is partnering with the government’s skill development arm to train 2 million developers in India. It will roll out free public wi-fi spots in 100 Indian train stations in the coming year.
Its rural internet program Project Loon will move from pilot phase and cover 300,000 Indian villages. Project Loon, a network of internet-beaming high-altitude balloons, will help connect villages and towns that have no fiber-optic infrastructure. The program is yet to clear regulatory hurdles in the country, though.
Google is focusing heavily on rolling out products in Indian languages which the next few hundred million Indian internet users will use. Google’s Tap to Translate service will launch next year and detect and convert real-time any text that the phone camera is pointed to. Google will include several Indian languages in its voice recognition software.
