Google will focus its Rs 75,000 crore India Digitisation Fund on investing in women-led early-stage startups, according to a senior company official on December 19. To make internet access more affordable, the company invested USD 10 billion (roughly Rs 75,000 crore at the current exchange rate at the end of 2020).
The company paid USD 4.5 billion for a 7.73 percent stake in Jio and USD 700 million for a 1.2 percent stake in Bharti Airtel via Google IDF.
“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, Google India said at Google for India event.
The company announced several projects powered by artificial intelligence, including speech technology, voice and video search etc.
“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 company announced a partnership with the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru to collect speech data from 773 districts across India in order to improve its language translation and search technology.
Google has announced a USD 1 million grant to IIT Madras to establish India’s first responsible AI centre.
