Jaishankar meets Sundar Pichai, discusses India’s digital transformation

Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday met Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai who is on a visit to India and discussed the digital transformation of the country. They also discussed global strategic developments. On Twitter, Jaishankar said, “Great to meet CEO, @Google and Alphabet, @sundarpichai today afternoon. Discussed India's digital transformation and global strategic developments."

On Monday, Sundar Pichai had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said it was inspiring to see the speedy pace of technological change under his leadership. "Thank you for a great meeting today PM @narendramodi. Inspiring to see the rapid pace of technological change under your leadership. Look forward to continuing our strong partnership and supporting India's G20 presidency to advance an open, connected internet that works for all, Pichai said in a tweet.

India has formally assumed G20 Presidency on 1 December.

Sundar Pichai also said that India will be a big export economy and the country will benefit from open and connected internet. He was addressing the Google for India event in New Delhi. At the event, Sundar Pichai said India needs to create a balance between safeguarding citizens and enabling companies to innovate with its framework.

Addressing the Google for India event, Sundar Pichai said, “It is easy to build something which scales across the entire country and this is the opportunity that India has. There's no better moment to do a startup, even though we are working through a macro-economic situation right now."

"It's always special to come back to India, and this trip is significant as it's my first visit back since the pandemic. As we come out of it, there's a sense of optimism about the country's future and the role technology can play to improve lives," Sundar Pichai added.

Sundar Pichai said Google would be focussing on startups from India, around one-fourth of its USD 300 million investment in startups, will be invested in those led by women. “Given the scale and technology leadership it [India] will have, it's important to make sure you are balancing, putting in safeguards for people. You're creating an innovative framework, so that companies can innovate on top of a certainty in the legal framework."

Sundar Pichai also declared that the search results page will also support Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali in the coming days. Hindi is already available in it.

"Search result pages will be bilingual in India for those who want and the feature is already available in Hindi. This feature will be supported in languages Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali in the coming days. Voice search can now understand people who speak Hinglish better. Using a new neural network model, which takes the person's accent, context, etc into account," Sundar Pichai added.

(With agency inputs)