All the major tech giants are investing in India lately.
In January, Amazon announced its investment of $1 billion in India. In April 2020, midway of the pandemic, Facebook announced its investment plans of $5.7 billion in India. Yesterday, 13th July 2020, it's Google announcing they will be investing $10 billion (₹75,000 crores) in the next 5-7 years.
Prime Minister Modi and Sundar Pichai had a very fruitful interaction regarding the same.
This morning, had an extremely fruitful interaction with @sundarpichai. We spoke on a wide range of subjects, particularly leveraging the power of technology to transform the lives of India’s farmers, youngsters and entrepreneurs. pic.twitter.com/IS9W24zZxs
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 13, 2020
This investment is the reflection of Google's confidence in the future of India and its digital economy.
"I am pleased that Google recognizes the great power of India's digital empowerment, India's digital innovation, and the need to create further opportunity," said Ravi Shankar Prasad, cabinet minister for Law & Justice, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology of India.
You can view the entire announcement session here:
WHY INDIA?
India has been on a rapid pace of change unfolding over the past few years. Young people are excited about using the latest apps and services, people are using smartphones to improve lives in rural villages, and more than 2,500 Indian YouTube creators who each have over a million subscribers.
Today, 26 million small and medium businesses across India are now discoverable on Search and Maps, which was just 33% of now four years ago. These SMBs are driving connections with more than 150 million users every month. Small merchants across the country can now accept digital payments.
All this progress was only possible because of Prime Minister Modi's vision for Digital India. It laid a strong foundation of digital connectivity, the country has made enormous progress in getting a billion Indians online. Low-cost smartphones, combined with affordable data, and world-class telecom infrastructure, have paved the way for new opportunities.
More than 500 million people in India are online today, and over 450 million smartphones are in active use in the country. India has attracted billions and billions of investments from the likes of Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Twitter. The numbers suggest there is still massive potential for growth, despite red flags raised recently by government efforts to exert more control online. Google's plans, and the recent fundraising spree by Indian entrepreneur Mukesh Ambani, show investors are ready to commit even more.
Google's announcement today also comes at a time when India appears to be shutting its door to Chinese firms. New Delhi last month banned 59 apps and services developed by Chinese companies due to border tensions and privacy concerns.
One of the ways Google, which began operations in India in 2004, has extended its reach in the country is through partnerships with local smartphone vendors to produce and sell low-cost handsets that receive timely and more frequent software updates. Google will be facilitating more low-cost, high-quality smartphones so that more people can easily access the internet to grow, learn, and succeed, as expressed by Caesar Sengupta, GM & VP of Payments, and Next Billion Users at Google, without disclosing many details.
China has, for a long time, banned foreign companies that could rival with its household companies, always giving security and data privacy as lame excuses. Google, Facebook, Netflix, Bing, Twitter, Pinterest, and Quora are the few among the long list of organizations that are not permitted to do any business in China. All of this, fueled by trade wars, COVID-19, and a growing sense of China's appearance as a global economic superpower, has made it easier to legitimize retaliatory measures planned for disconnecting China monetarily. The nation is an extremist system that persecutes numerous minorities and utilizes complex innovation to keep spying on its own peoples' every movement and censors many issues, which makes organizations like Huawei getting business abroad tricky.
That's why Apple has already established production locally in India, with its primary manufacturing Foxconn announcing an investment of $1 billion to expand a factory recently. Apple's free to do business in India, but unless it manufactures devices locally, the country sets a high tariff on imported devices.
References:
Comments
Post a Comment