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Google on Monday announced $300 million fund as part of the search engine giant’s initiatives to invest in startups from India. Out of these, a quarter of the funds will be dedicated to startups led by women or the ones focusing on bridging the gender gap.
“If you take example of the US, the reason start-ups are successful is when they create something they have an access to 300 million something market. It is easier to create something which scales across the country. In India, you need to scale across the entire country. there is no better time to create a start-up than the current moment”, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the Google For India 2022 event.
Pichai also spoke on the artificial intelligence in India and Google’s vision for the future. “We are increasingly using AI to scale up the number of languages. We recently added nine new Indian languages like Assamese, Bhojpuri, Konkani etc. We are working on one powerful AI model where we can bring information through thousands of languages”.
Union minister for information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, who was also present at the event, said that AI will play a big role in India’s tech story. He listed agriculture and languages as the focus areas.
“Diversity of languages that we have, there is a need to bridge gap between people who speak a language. We are working Ensure credit access to the people at the bottom of the pyramid”, the minister added,
“Once we have our Data Protection Bill, the Telecom Bill and the Digital India Bill, it will create a robust framework in which we can use some of the data sets and harness the power of technology to provide better solutions and services”, Vaishnaw said, adding that the government will focus on the middle class and the poorer sections of the society.
Pichai said technology needs responsible regulation and the countries should think to how best safeguard their citizens. “It’s an important phase and we are engaging constructively. India has a leadership role to play here, given the scale and technology leadership it has”, he added.
