India Fund of Google to Invest in Women-led Start-Ups

New Delhi: Through its Rs 75,000 crore ‘India Digitisation Fund’, Google will invest in women-led early-stage startups in the country. This was stated by a top official of Google on Monday. Google had launched $10 billion (Rs 75,000 crore) worth ‘India Digitisation Fund’ to make access to the internet affordable in India.

The Google IDF has a 7.73 per cent stake in Jio for $4.5 billion and a 1.2 per cent stake in Bharti Airtel for $700 million.

“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,” said Sanjay Gupta, Country Manager & VP, Google India. 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,” Sanjay Gupta said.

The company announced a project with the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science to collect speech data from 773 districts across India. This will help in its language translation and search technology. Google has also declared a grant of $1 million to set up India’s first responsible AI centre at IIT Madras.