Google should bring Tensor chip plant in India in 3 years: Vaishnaw

While Google has announced the manufacturing of Pixel smartphones in India, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has asked the company to start production of its Tensor chipset in India in three years.

The communications and IT minister has also suggested Google to bring premium Pixel Fold devices in India at the earliest.

The Tensor G3 chipset includes the latest generation of ARM central processing units, an upgraded Graphics processing unit (GPU), and next-gen Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) to support Google's artificial intelligence (AI) models.

GPU and application-specific chips are crucial to support the development and implementation of AI technologies, but there is a shortage in their supplies due to advanced bulk orders from the US and China-based entities.

"I have asked them to bring the fab of Tensor to India in three years. In the coming days, they should start manufacturing Tensor in an Indian fab," Vaishnaw told reporters on the sidelines of the Google for India event.

The minister said India's manufacturing ecosystem has become very good, and he has asked Google to support it and deepen it further.

"The entire supply chain team of Google will be working here to ensure that the Indian component system gets deeper," Vaishnaw said.

At the event, Google Senior Vice President for Devices and Services Rick Osterloh announced that the company will make the Pixel series of smartphones in India, starting with Pixel 8, and plans to roll out the India-made devices in 2024.

He said that the company will partner with international and domestic manufacturers to make the phones in India.

Google's payment app GPay at the event announced a credit facility for consumers and merchants in partnership with banks and NBFCs for loans, starting from Rs 15,000.

Google Pay Vice President Ambarish Kenghe said all the credit offerings will be enabled with the foundational principle of data privacy, consent, control and security.

Vaishnaw said that the availability of digital credit will be very powerful.

At present, he said, small Kirana store owners have to run behind banks for credit, but with digital credit, banks will start chasing merchants.

"By October 2025, the way everyone talks about digital payment, in the same way, people will talk about digital credit. In the next two years, people will come and study the impact of digital credit in India," Vaishnaw said.

The minister said that digital credit will enhance competition in the credit market, which will possibly bring down interest rates.

Google India Country head and Vice President Sanjay Gupta said the company will leverage generative AI across products to diminish language and regional barriers that come in the way of businesses of people while making the internet safe.

"At Google, we plan to leverage the powers of Generative AI in some key areas, which are critical to the digital economy," Gupta said.

To curb financial fraud, Google launched an early threat detection and warning system DigiKavach, designed to identify and study emerging financial fraud patterns and develop and implement effective countermeasures before they cause widespread harm.

Google Cloud Managing Director Bikram Singh Bedi said it is expanding its partnership with the government-backed ONDC platform to enable Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) to sell their produce online.

Google's philanthropic arm Google.org announced grants of over USD 7 million to India's changemakers, combating misinformation and deploying AI to improve agriculture outcomes.

Google.org announced a new USD 4 million grant to the cybersecurity advocacy organisation CyberPeace Foundation for online safety and digital literacy in India and a USD 3.3 million grant to Wadhwani AI to support its effort with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) to apply AI-powered pest management technology to 10 staple food crops across the country.