Google has launched a brand new website that details the success stories of new technology companies and internet startups in India. This was announced via a post titled “Digital India with Google – Translating the vision of connected India”, on the official Google India blog by Mr. Rajan Anandan, the Vice President and Managing Director, Sales & Operations for Google South East Asia and India. According to him, the just-launched India-centric website is optimized for mobile devices and can be accessed by just about anyone from any part of the world.
India, the second most populous country on the planet with a population of over a billion, will have almost half its inhabitants on the internet in less than two years’ time, as per a report published some time back by an industry body called the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI). Currently, over 300 million Indians are online as per a previously-published report from the same organization. With the number of first-time net users increasing at a rapid pace, the blog post says that India’s small and medium businesses, especially technology startups, are reaping the rewards of the rapid progress of the country’s tech sector over the past decade or so.
According to the post by Mr. Anandan, India is already home to the third-largest number of technology startups in the world. The country reportedly has as many as 4,100 technology startups currently – a number that is likely to increase significantly by the year 2020. Mr. Anandan however, doesn’t just give cold, hard statistics regarding India’s evolution as one of the preeminent locations for technology startups in the world. He says that a connected India will help empower millions of disenfranchised people around the country, allow small businesses to grow, improve the standards of education by opening up children to new possibilities hitherto unknown for large swathes of the population and contribute further to the already burgeoning Indian economy.
The post on the official Google India blog also claims that, “businesses all around India are using the technology we provide as an engine for their growth”. As a way of proving the company’s commitment to tech startups in the country, Mr. Anandan cited Google’s recently-announced $20 million investment in 1,000 small tech startups in the country. According to the blog post, this is the “single largest investment we’ve made anywhere in the world for Google Cloud Services”. The Mountain View, California-based search giant further claims that it has helped as many as 2 million small businesses in India to establish an online presence through ‘Google My Business’. The company, however, admits that more needs to be done, and says that its latest endeavor is to help a further 20 million small businesses in the country get online in the foreseeable future.