Google is ramping up investments in India for development of more local products, building engineering capabilities and setting up a new campus in the country as it aims to bring all Indians online.
India as one of the most important markets, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Our focus is on bringing Internet access to everyone, making sure our products are working for them in a meaningful way and then ensure our platform allows them to add their voice to the Internet.”
Our focus is on bringing Internet access to everyone, making sure our products are working for them in a meaningful way and then ensure our platform allows them to add their voice to the Internet, says Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo: AP
Google plans to ramp up engineering operations in the country by hiring more people at its Bengaluru and Hyderabad centres, said Mr. Pichai, who is on his first official visit to India since taking the top job in August.. A new campus will also come up in Hyderabad, he said. .Google has four offices in India with over 1,500 people working on building products, of the 14,000 people globally.
The company will install 100 railway stations across the country with WiFi, by December 2016 with Mumbai Central station being the first to go live in January, Pichai said. It is a part of the plan to provide free WiFi access at railway stations in the country as announced during Prime Minister’s visit to the headquarters of the search engine giant in September.
India will have the largest user base for Android devices by next year, overtaking the United States, though just a quarter of the Indian telecom user base has smart-phones, Pichai said..India ranks second, after the U.S. in terms of search volumes from mobile phones. It already sees higher volumes of search traffic from India on mobile devices than those from desktops.
To foster developers and content developers, Mr Pichai said Google is announcing a programme to train 2 million developers in the country for which it will partner with 30 universities across India and National Skill Development Corporation. The Indian-born CEO also shared plans to expand Google's rural internet programme for women from pilot to full-scale programme to cover three lakh villages in three years.
