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India will soon be a global player in the digital economy, says Google CEO

by IBNS 05 Jan 2017, 12:47 am

Kharagpur, Jan 5 (IBNS): CEO of tech-giant Google Inc, Sundar Pichai, who was at the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kharagpur, West Bengal on Thursday to interact with students of his alma mater, feels that India will soon be a global player in the digital economy.

“I absolutely with full certainty convinced that India will soon be a global player in the digital economy, it will compete with any company in the world,” he said.

On discussing about how Google is partnering in PM Narendra Modi’s Digital India Campaign, the Google CEO said: “We are one of the biggest partners of the Digital India Platform. Google has always been dedicated to build products for the world. When we look into India we need to focus on a few things like making Google available in different languages.”

“The second thing that we are focusing on is to introduce cheaper smart phones, as low as $30 USD for India and most importantly in the connectivity, Google is presently working on the wifi project. We have already connected hundred railway stations till now and Kharagpur is one of them,” he added.

About how the digital start-ups in India can compete with large MNC’s with huge investments, as the market in India is not developed digitally, he said: “In India the potential is there and the market is developing. The only drawback is the lack of smart phones and poor connectivity. The Indian start up’s instead of focusing on a particular sector they need to set their sights a bit bigger. I feel in the years to come we will see bigger IT companies in the world from India.”

Discussing about next development of the R&D of Google, Pichai said: “Right now we are focusing more on machine learning. Advancement of machine learning can bring big differences in many fields. Recently we have released a paper on machine learning to help diagnose diabetic retina which can even cause blindness.”

Machine learning can be used to accurately detect diabetic retina. So we want to develop machine learning for various other fields as well,” added he.

Pichai, an alumina of the elite institute, had studied metallurgical engineering in 1993. He then went on to pursue an MS in Engineering and Materials Science from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School.

The event Back in Campus organised by Google witnessed a huge gathering of 3.5 thousand students who had an opportunity to directly interact with Pichai.

He joined Google in 2004 as its vice president of product management before being elevated as its CEO in 2015.

(Reporting by Adit Majumder)