Global Startups In India Major Target For Google Cloud, Says Senior Executive

Terming India as a “hotbed” for global startups, a senior Google executive on Wednesday (June 12) reportedly said that the country was one of the key global markets for Google Cloud.

As per Economic Times, Matt Renner, president of global sales at Google Cloud, said that Google Cloud will double down on its investments in startups in the current fiscal year (FY25). 

“Among a handful of markets globally, we picked India because of the sheer volume and unbelievable upside of potential from global startups… India is an incredible place for innovation in AI. We are seeing customers push the envelope in AI innovation. We are well positioned with our AI expertise, tools and history, to help partner with them as we move forward,” Renner reportedly said. 

Renner is in India for a two-day long trip to the country. In the first leg of his tour, he was in Bengaluru on Wednesday where he met a dozen startup founders across five different industries. 

During the meeting, he reportedly wooed the founders by offering startups discounts and credit to make it easier for them to get started on Google Cloud. He will head to Mumbai to meet customers there on Thursday. 

Meanwhile, Google Cloud India also plans to leverage India’s push for digital public infrastructure (DPI) to fuel its growth and take these products global. 

“We have been working with Bengaluru-based non-profit EkStep Foundation (cofounded by Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani) to try and see how we can bring these not just to the Indian market but also perhaps take it to the international markets,” vice president and country manager at Google Cloud India Bikram Singh reportedly added.

He further said, “The benefit the ecosystem is seeing is about getting these DPG solutions and DPI solutions’ sandboxes deployed in an accelerated fashion so that their users, customers and citizens of the country start using these better. We aren’t really divulging the commercial details”.

Meanwhile, Renner also underlined that a quarter of Google Cloud’s developers hail from India. 

The development comes at a time when Google Cloud is looking to onboard new partners and businesses as generative AI (GenAI) sees rapid adoption. Last month, Google Cloud and telecom giant Bharti Airtel inked a “long-term” partnership to deliver cloud solutions to Indian businesses. 

Prior to that in May itself, homegrown GenAI startup Soket AI Labs also launched India’s first open-source multilingual foundational model called Pragna-1B in partnership with Google Cloud. 

In February, the tech giant Google also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Maharashtra government to drive innovative and scalable AI solutions in areas such as agriculture, healthcare, sustainability, education, and startups.

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