Google would focus on investing in women-led early-stage firms through its Rs 75,000 crore India Digitisation Fund, a top company executive said on Monday. To make internet connection more accessible, the corporation invested USD 10 billion (about Rs 75,000 crore at the current currency rate at the end of 2020).
Through Google IDF, the business purchased a 7.73% investment in Jio for USD 4.5 billion and a 1.2% share in Bharti Airtel for USD 700 million.
“Moving forward, as part of our IDF investments, we will be targeting support for early-stage companies with a particular focus on women-led startups,” Sanjay Gupta, Country Manager & VP, of Google India said at Google for India event.
The business unveiled a number of AI-driven technologies, including voice and video search, speech recognition, and more.
“With AI, text content can convert to video in an instant…Translations from English to virtually any language are possible at scale. AI can bring quantum leaps in online safety through advanced threat detection,” Gupta said.
The business established a partnership with the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru to gather speech data from 773 districts throughout India in order to improve its language translation and search capabilities.
Google has given a USD 1 million grant to IIT Madras to establish India’s first responsible AI center.