NEW DELHI: Google India began with 5 workers in 2004 and since then, it has grown to be among the many largest Google worker bases exterior of the US.
As smartphones have introduced thousands and thousands extra on-line, Indians have grow to be a number of the most enthusiastic Google customers. Utilizing merchandise like Gmail, Translate and Android, India is second solely to the US in whole variety of cell ‘Search’ queries.
Search in 2003 began in English however the firm shortly added Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil and lots of different languages going ahead.
India’s digital transformation is at a tipping level and thousands and thousands of related Indians, reasonably priced smartphones and information, document highs in digital funds, the digitisation of citizen companies, and a vibrant startup ecosystem have put the expertise sector on observe to grow to be the one largest contributor to the nationwide financial system.
With this in thoughts, Google launched India-first improvements, labored to decrease boundaries to entry, and invested in strengthening the strategic pillars of India’s digital financial system by its $10 billion (roughly Rs 75,000 crore) India Digitisation Fund that was introduced in 2020.
The corporate is investing the cash within the nation through a mixture of fairness investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments.
In keeping with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the tempo of technological change in India has been extraordinary, and there’s a lot alternative nonetheless forward.
“We’re serving to to advance India’s digital future. That features our efforts to construct a single, unified AI mannequin that shall be able to dealing with over 100 Indian languages throughout speech and textual content – a part of our international effort to deliver the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages on-line, and to assist folks entry data and data of their most popular language,” Pichai mentioned in December final yr.
Google Pay has accomplished greater than 5 years in India. At Google Pay, the corporate used superior strategies in our security engine that analyze combination transaction patterns of thousands and thousands of customers, relating this to a graph of a billion nodes.
The corporate additionally launched a helpful new function in Google Pay that makes it simpler than ever to entry transaction historical past.
In June, Google partnered with the Nationwide Funds Company of India (NPCI) to allow Aadhaar-based authentication for UPI activation to additional ease the person onboarding course of on Google Pay.
The unified funds interface (UPI)-based transactions reached 9.3 billion in June 2023 from 151 million in January 2018, primarily pushed by the expansion in Individual-to-Service provider (P2M) transactions, in line with Worldline’s ‘India Digital Funds Report for H1 2023’.
Three UPI apps had been dominant by way of quantity and worth; PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm. When it comes to transaction quantity in June, the three apps accounted for 95.68 per cent of all transactions in comparison with 94.55 per cent a yr earlier than.
The expertise large this month launched an earthquake alert system in India that may assist folks with Android smartphones run to security when the quake begins.
The system, launched in session with the Nationwide Catastrophe Administration Authority (NDMA) and the Nationwide Seismology Heart (NSC) in India, makes use of sensors in Android smartphones to detect and estimate earthquakes.
Every Android smartphone is supplied with tiny accelerometers that may act as mini seismometers. When a telephone is plugged in and charged, it will possibly detect the very beginnings of earthquakes. Google will ship two varieties of alerts: Be Conscious and Take Motion.
Google in August expanded its generative AI search expertise in India and Japan, the primary nations exterior the US.
The brand new AI-powered search function, dubbed SGE (Search Generative Expertise), shall be out there by Google’s Search Labs in these markets and can introduce a brand new function geared toward making it simpler to search out data in its AI-powered overviews.
In India, customers may also discover a language toggle to assist multilingual audio system simply swap forwards and backwards between English and Hindi, they usually may also take heed to the responses, which is a well-liked choice. In each nations, Search advertisements will proceed to look in devoted advert slots all through the web page, the tech large mentioned.
In June this yr, Pichai introduced the corporate will open its international fintech operation centre at GIFT Metropolis in Gujarat.
After assembly Prime Minister Narendra Modi within the US, Pichai mentioned the corporate will proceed to spend money on India by its $10 billion digitisation fund.
In December final yr, Pichai visited India and pledged assist for India’s G20 Presidency.
