Google to invest billions of US dollars in Asian market’s digitisation

In Vietnam, following the success of Google's Gaming Growth Lab in 2021 and 2022, Google will further expand the program beyond mobile game developers to Tools and Utilities mobile apps developers and offer open access to educational content in 2023. This year, Apps Growth Lab (previously known as Gaming Growth Lab program) will be open for the top-up-and-coming app developer studios in Vietnam looking to accelerate their business.

According to the e-Conomy SEA report 2022, Vietnam’s gross merchandise value (GMV) in the digital economy is on course to reach 50 billion USD in 2025. On an average, seven out of ten games studios in Vietnam target oversea markets and gaming is becoming the next high-value export industry for Vietnam. Developers are a key part of it. To sustainably support the fast-growing pace of Vietnam’s digital economy, Google want to reach out to more apps developers beyond the gaming industry and provide them with sufficient trainings as well as practical sharings from not only Google experts but also industry veterans.

Google already has a local development team in Japan working to brush up search services to suit Japanese users. Google also has a team in India, where contrary to Japan, "One-third of queries ... are spoken queries with very long forms”.

Google was also said to aim to set up similar locally focused development teams in Southeast Asia and other countries after realizing that "in certain countries, you have to have local teams that are very tuned in to the local culture and society."

For India, after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington, DC on Friday, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google is investing USD 10 billion in India’s digitisation fund, adding that PM Modi’s vision for Digital India serves as a blueprint for other countries.

Pichai after meeting PM Modi, said, “It was an honour to meet PM Modi during the historic visit to the US. We shared with the Prime Minister that Google is investing USD 10 billion in India’s digitisation fund.” Pichai further added, “We are excited today that we are announcing the opening up of our global fintech operation centre in GIFT city Gujarat.”

Google is investing USD 10 billion in the digitization fund of India

Notably, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City is a central business district under construction in Gandhinagar district in Gujarat, India.

“PM’s vision for Digital India was way ahead of his time I now see it as a blueprint that other countries are looking to do,” Pichai said after meeting Prime Minister Modi.

Pichai, who joined Google in 2004, became the CEO of the company in 2015. PM Modi had congratulated him on his appointment as CEO.

Sundar Pichai met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi in December last year and said it is inspiring to see the rapid pace of technological change under his leadership. Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet, said he looked forward to continuing strong partnerships and supporting India’s G20 presidency to advance open internet that works for all.

During his India visit last year, Pichai also attended the 8th edition of the Google for India event, with Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology in attendance.

The Google CEO said he is here to see progress being made from our USD 10 billion, 10-year India Digitization Fund (IDF), and share new ways helping to advance India’s digital future.

“That includes our efforts to build a single, unified AI model that will be capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across speech and text – part of our global effort to bring the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages online and to help people access knowledge and information in their preferred language. We’re also supporting a new, multidisciplinary centre for responsible AI with IIT Madras,” said Pichai.

Notably, Project Relate is an app that can understand people with non-binary speech. It can listen, repeat, and understand, and the app is available for Hindi users in early 2023.

“Search result pages will be bilingual in India for those who want and the feature is already available in Hindi. This feature will be supported in languages Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Bengali in the coming days. Voice search can now understand people who speak Hinglish better. Using a new neural network model, which takes the person’s accent, context, etc into account,” he added.

“Very interested in helping create more jobs, helping digitise more small and medium size businesses and helping more Indian companies and products be able to be exported all around the world,” said Jassy.