Hello everyone, I hope you all are safe and healthy in this pandemic and maintaining social distancing.
As the main focus of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi is toward digitalization of our country and he launched the initiative Digital India in 2015.
Now, Google is also announced its investment in India that the company would invest $10 billion dollar in the upcoming five to seven years with the motive of gaining its position in the digital ecosystem of fastest-growing trillion dollar economy in the world and the fifth largest overall which is emerging as place for global internet giants.
Google’s CEO Mr. Sundar Pichai announced “Today, I’m excited to announce the Google for India Digitization Fund. Through this effort, we will invest ₹75,000 crore, or approximately $10 billion, into India over the next 5–7 years. We’ll do this through a mix of equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments. This is a reflection of our confidence in the future of India and its digital economy”.
I think we all can agree that this kind of exorbitant sum will give an incredible push towards India’s digital vision. Google outlined four-point agenda to turn these visions into reality.
- Allowing affordable access and information for every Indian in their native language whether it is Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or any other languages.
We all can say that India is a diverse country where people are from different cultures, languages, income, tradition and wealth live together so Google and other companies who are trying and thinking of investing in India will have to adapt to these differences.
- Google promised to building new products and services that are deeply relevant to India’s unique need. Every market has its own peculiar idiosyncrasy and India is no different.
Take an example as when Samsung launched its Active Plus Washing Machine in which they added built in sink, given the tendency among Indians to pre-wash the clothes by hand which means that customer do not need to wash the clothes from hand.
I am not saying that Google is trying to build washing machines but like tech products are likely to witness a surge in adoption rate if they are built for the specifically for the audience they cater to.
We also can take example of Google maps as the most of Indians prefer two-wheeler vehicle so google maps introduced two-wheeler mode in which you can find shortest route which is not accessible to cars and trucks and since then many Indians rely on google maps. I think it’s pretty clear what Google is trying to do.
- Google will help in empowering business as the businesses continue or embark on their digital transformation. As example we can take Google Pay in which it has more than 3000 online merchants and 20000 offline merchants. They can use it to make payments, pay their suppliers, transfer money to employees and pay the monthly bills.
And if Google can come up with a solution or merge with other similar entities that are trying to help grow India’s digital ecosystem that could be a win-win for everyone involved.
- Google also promised leveraging technology and Artificial Intelligence for social goods in areas like health, education and agriculture. Artificial Intelligence could help us solve some of the world’s most challenging problems climate action, Quality education etc.
There are many researches are going through in which we can use AI like accelerating the Sustainable development goals.
But do bear in mind that there is alternate motive here because India is a key overseas market for Google where a range of its products and services, including Search, YouTube and Android, have made inroads with much of the entire online population. The nation of 1.3 billion people has emerged as perhaps the last great untapped growth market for American and Chinese giants.
After two days of announcing the company revealed the key details that nearly half of the money will go to top of top telecom operator owned by Asia’s richest man. The internet giant will invest $4.5 billion into Jio platform as part of plan to provide “increase access for hundreds of million in India who don’t own a smartphone” said Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai.
Some days before Facebook has bought 9.99% stake in Jio platform (JPL) for rupees 43,574 crore, making it the largest minority shareholder in Jio Platforms Limited. So there must be any reason why these big companies are investing in Jio. Well, there is we all are familiar with banning of 59 apps which are owned by Chinese, citing data concerns. A draft e-commerce law seeks to give the government unfettered access to data. And policymakers, as well as representatives of companies like Jio, have repeated the idea that the data of Indians is a national resource, one that ought to be exploited by Indian firms and the government not global ones.
“Data is the new oil (in the new world order)” Mr. Mukesh Ambani said in 2019. “And data is the new wealth. India’s data must be controlled and owned by Indian people – and not by corporates, especially global corporations. Today, we have to collectively launch a new movement against data colonisation.” This movement has also meant additional focus on the Indian operations of the US tech giants – Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. And beyond this simple fact that Jio (with major investment in 5G and content) is set to even expand even further into the data and internet space in the country, and so would seem like a solid investment bet for any player.
In conclusion all I can say that big companies like Google, Facebook investing in Jio Platform Limited will lead India to achieve its digitalisation vision and because of which Jio is all set to be among the first to deploy 5G ready products for hundreds of millions of Indians. At least in India, the next decade looks to be Jio’s—and some of its biggest global competitors are now sitting on its board to help it out.
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