“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,” he said via videoconference at the company’s annual event focused on India.

Investments will focus on four areas:

• First, enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language, whether it’s Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or any other
• Second, building new products and services that are deeply relevant to India’s unique needs
• Third, empowering businesses as they continue to embark on their digital transformation
• Fourth, leveraging technology and AI for social good, in areas like health, education and agriculture

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.

More than 500 million people in India are online today and over 450 million smartphones are in active use in the country.

“There’s still more work to do in order to make the internet affordable and useful for a billion Indians… from improving voice input and computing for all of India’s languages, to inspiring and supporting a whole new generation of entrepreneurs,” said Pichai.

Google partners with CBSE to train one million teachers

Google has announced a partnership with Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Skill Education and Training, to push education in India by helping teachers and institutions in digitising the experience. During the Google for India 2020 virtual event, it was announced that Google would enable 1 million teachers in 22,000 schools to deliver “blended learning,” a combination of online learning and a classroom approach, by the end of this year. Additionally, Google also announced a new grant for USD 1 million (roughly Rs 7.51-crore) to train teachers in regard to virtual education.

As per a blog post by Google and the announcement by senior country marketing director at Google India, Sapna Chadha, during the livestream, the search giant has plans to deliver a “blended learning experience” across 22,000 schools the country by the end of 2020. This means Google will work with more than one-million teachers using free tools like G Suite for Education, YouTube, Google Classroom, and more to train them in offering a blended learning experience.

(Courtesy: Agencies)