Google to invest Rs. 75,000cr to boost India's digital economy

Google to invest Rs. 75,000cr to boost India's digital economy
13 Jul 2020

Google hosted its sixth 'Google for India' event on July 13 and reiterated its vision to drive the digital transformation of the country and help with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

For this, CEO Sundar Pichai, along with other executives at the company, announced a series of initiatives to solve the challenges Indians face right now.

Let's take a look at them.

Investment to fuel India's digitization efforts
Announcement #1

During the keynote, Pichai announced the Google for India Digitization Fund with an investment of Rs. 75,000 crore.

He said this amount will be invested by the company over 6-7 years to focus on affordable access to information in every Indian language, build new products/services for consumers, empower businesses, and leverage tech and AI for social good in the areas of health, education, agriculture.

Initiatives to help with the education of kids
Announcement #2

The school closures triggered by COVID-19 have affected over 320 million students across India.

To tackle this challenge and create an ecosystem of digital learning, Google has pledged $1 million to Kaivalya Education Foundation, working with CSF and TheTeacherApp, to train more than 7,00,000 teachers so that they can provide virtual education to students who are from low-income communities in India.

Partnership with the CBSE

Further, along with its own investment, the company has also partnered with the CBSE board to train and upskill over 1 million teachers in over 22,000 schools across India to help them deliver blended learning to students.

This will combine the classroom approach with online learning using free tools like G-Suite for education, Google Classroom, YouTube, and more.