Google and Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai visited the Indian Embassy in the US capital to meet India's Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, and discussed the company’s continuing activities in India last week. This was the first time when a top Indian-American tech CEO visited the embassy.
Pichai, who earlier in the year was one of the 17 individuals who received the Padma Bhushan, said, “Thank you Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu for the great conversation. Appreciated the chance to discuss Google's commitment to India and look forward to continuing our support for India's digital future.”
“Technology that transforms; ideas that enable! Delighted to receive (the) CEO (of) Google and Alphabet Sundar Pichai at the Embassy today. Exchanged thoughts on expanding India-US commercial, knowledge & tech partnership with Google,” Sandhu tweeted after the meeting.
Google has made substantial investments in India, especially in the push towards digitisation in the nation. Google is also one of the major platforms in the digital payments sector in the country. The tech giant has partnered with Reliance Jio Infocomm to produce the Jio 4G Mobile Phone, which will be one of the cheapest 4G enabled smartphones in the country, and announced an investment of $4.5 billion in Jio Platforms.
Google also invested $1 billion in Bharti Airtel earlier in the year, buying a 1.28 percent stake in the company for $700 million and a $300 million multi-year commercial contract. The investment is part of Google’s bigger Digitization Fund for India, which was announced in 2020 and promised investments to the tune of $10 billion for digitisation efforts over the next seven years.
The company has also been working together with the Indian government on the Digital India Program and the National Digital Literacy Mission. With such multi-level partnerships, it isn’t hard to see why Ambassador Sandhu called Google an important partner in India’s digital evolution, something that the government considers a priority.
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(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
