Google Signs MoU With Karnataka Govt To Spur Startups From Tier-2, 3 Cities

Tech giant Google on Friday (September 18) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Karnataka government to promote women founders and startups across Tier-II and Tier-III cities in the state. 

As part of this, Google will collaborate with the Karnataka Innovation and Technology Society (KITS), the state government’s startup cell, to provide training and mentorship sessions to startups across domains such as cloud services, user experience (UX), Android, product strategy, leadership and marketing. 

The tech giant will also deploy its women founder-focused mentorship programs and the accelerator initiative to address issues faced by women founders. Google said that these initiatives will ensure that women founders access resources and opportunities at the crucial early days of their startup journey. 

“…Karnataka has been at the forefront of the startup revolution. As we move forward, we want to enable a collaborative and an inclusive digital environment for startups to grow and thrive. I am sure this collaboration will also support many of our entrepreneurs and innovators from the emerging tech clusters of Beyond Bengaluru,” Karnataka’s science and technology minister CN Ashwath Narayan said.

Reacting to the collaboration, Google India’s developer relations lead Karthik Padmanabhan said, “India has a flourishing startup community, yet not all founders have equal access to capital, support networks or mentorship. These are critical resources that can help the startup ecosystem to continuously learn, innovate and evolve. Through our collaboration with KITS, we want to strengthen the support for the local startup ecosystem, enable equal representation for women and level the playing field across the state….”

Google will also organise a series of sessions for the selected startups to impart knowledge about growth, monetisation and other tech skills. 

The tech major will collaborate with KITS to offer scholarships and training to the underserved youth and job seekers. The initiative will support qualified applicants to connect with employers and pursue certification programmes across fields such as project management, data analytics, UX design and digital marketing.

Google will also work with schools and teachers to boost digital literacy among students. Besides, the tech giant will also collaborate with the Karnataka Fintech Task Group to promote digital payments and increase its adoption.

This adds to a long line of initiatives launched by Google in the past few years, aimed at spurring the startup ecosystem in India. 

In June, it unveiled its women-focused accelerator program to help founders address challenges such as fundraising and hiring. This was followed by the launch of Startup School India in July which aims to ‘nurture’ 10,000 startups in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. 

In October, it also introduced a new virtual initiative termed ‘Google for Startups Accelerator: Circular Economy‘ aimed at accelerating startups and non-profits located in Asia-Pacific and North America.

In total, the big tech major claims to have accelerated 116 Indian startups and mentored more than 1,500 homegrown startups since 2015 as part of its Google for Startup Accelerator program. These startups have collectively raised more than $2 Bn in funding and have generated 12,000 jobs.