Google for India bets on digital skilling; small biz, language focus stays

Google's India chief Sanjay Gupta said Indians are now spending 20% more time on smartphones with 2.5x more smartphone users in past 12 months compared to the previous year

Digital skilling and education, along with enabling more language-based offerings and features dominated the seventh edition of Google's India-focused event "Google for India," held virtually for the second time on Thursday.

Google's India Country Head Sanjay Gupta said Indians are now spending 20 per cent more time on smartphones with 2.5 times more smartphone users in the last 12 months compared to the previous year.

"Across people, businesses, and institutions, the outbreak of COVID-19 has catapulted India’s adoption of digital to unprecedented levels. With the fundamental drivers of digitization now in place, and millions of new users coming online, India’s goal of becoming a truly digital economy is within sight. It is now imperative that we step up our efforts in building products that are even more inclusive of India’s diverse and unique needs. Last year, we launched the 10 billion dollar Google for India Digitization Fund. Today’s announcements aim at bridging more gaps and further broadening the inclusive base of India’s digital economy so that the advantages of this crucial transformation are accessible to everyone," he said.

Skilling

A major announcement on Thursday was "Google Career Certificates for upskillers," which will offer 100,000 scholarships to underserved learners across the country for a free enrolment to a Google Career Certificate of their choice. The programme will be run in partnership with Nasscom Foundation, Tata STRIVE, and SafeEducate, who will identify these learners.

The certificate courses will be available on Coursera, priced between Rs 6,000-8,000, and include skills such as information technology automation, project management, data analytics, and user interface design. The programme aims to skill 1 million people in the next two years, Gupta said.

"The impact of digital literacy can be life changing. Digital skill not only improves employability, but also empowers people get self employment. We have heard wonderful stories emerging from small towns about enterprising individuals with varying degree of formal education, evolving their digital skills to set up online stores, create content or offer online services," said Minister of Education and Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan at the event.

Through Google's partnership with the State government of Maharashtra and Delhi, and the Central Board of Secondary Education and FICCI Arise, 550,000 teachers have been trained in digital skills.

The tech giant is further supporting foundational literacy and numeracy programmes in Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, and Gujarat through the "Read Along" app, its Android language-learning app for children. Google's blended learning platform for students and teachers, which enables easy file sharing and simplifying assignments and grading, will also be available offline. It will allow users to download study material whenever they have Internet access, and use it later.

As more and more educational institutions continue to impart online courses, Google has introduced a Practice Problem feature. Now when you run a Google search for any high school Maths, Physics, Chemistry topic, you will find free learning content from top education providers like Byju's, Vedantu, Toppr, Doubtnut, Career6360 and others.

Google Pay and merchants

Ambarish Kenghe, Vice President, Product Management, Google Pay, said, “With over 10 million merchants now on Google Pay for Business, and many more joining the fold of digital payments every day, we are making it easy for merchants and micro-entrepreneurs to create an online presence directly from the Google Pay for business app. With the launch of MyShop - merchants will be able to effortlessly build a storefront where they will be able to add images, descriptions of their products, and prices in an easy and intuitive way, then share the link, through their Business Profile, across Google surfaces and beyond Google on social media. We hope this will further fuel the adoption of digital payments amongst new adopters, and help them create their online presence, and gain from the growing digital economy. The coming months will see MyShop and other features go live on Google Pay.”  

Users on Google Pay will also be able to use their voice while making direct transfers to bank accounts, and users will be able to use Hinglish on the app by early 2022.

Supporting small businesses

Google also announced a partnership with Small Industries Development Bank of India to support micro, small and medium enterprises especially enterprises run by women and those involved in production of health and safety materials.

Language enablement and user focus

Tackling the challenge of making high-quality information available to local language users, Pandu Nayak, Vice President, Search and Google Fellow, announced the launch of a new feature in Search that will give users an option to access web pages from other languages and view it in their preferred local language.

Now, when searching in a local language, if Google is not able to locate websites that have information in that language, it will find high-quality content on pages that may be in other languages and translate these into the language of the user’s query. When a user taps the translated title and snippet in search results, they can access the page with the content already translated into their language of choice, or view it in the original language. This feature aims at bridging the information gap that local language users often encounter when searching for information online.

Also launching in India – a global first – is a feature that will enable people to hear search results out loud, making it easier for users who prefer consuming information by listening. Aiming to expand voice driven experiences in local languages, this feature will be available in Hinglish and five Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil, and will be extended to other Google Search experiences in the future.

The tech giant has also enabled Google Assistant for end-to-end vaccine booking flow. It will guide the process of booking a vaccination appointment on the COWIN website with voice guidance in English and eight Indian languages at each step. Google has worked closely with COWIN to enable this integration, where even a relatively new internet user will now be able to easily book a vaccine appointment. This feature will be available in Chrome on Android and will begin rolling out in early 2022.