Washington: Internet giant Google will set up its global fintech operation centre at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) City in Gujarat, its CEO Sundar Pichai said on Friday after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi here. Pichai also said that his company continues to invest in India though its USD 10 billion India Digitisation Fund.
Prime Minister invited Pichai to explore further avenues of collaboration in the domains of Artificial Intelligence (AI), fintech, cybersecurity products and services. PM Modi also suggested the Google CEO to consider mobile device manufacturing in India, a statement from Prime Minister's Office said.
PM Modi and Pichai also discussed collaboration between Google and academic institutions in India to promote Research and Development and skill development. Modi who is on a state visit to the US at the invitation of President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden met the CEO contingent. Besides Pichai, PM Modi has interacted with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and AMD CEO Lisa Su, among others.
"Today we are announcing the opening of our global fintech operations centre in GIFT City, Gujarat. It will cement India's fintech leadership, thanks to UPI, and Aadhaar. We are going to build on that foundation and take it globally," the Indian-origin CEO said. It is exciting to see the progress that the country has made, particularly around the vision of Digital India and the economic opportunity, he added.
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I met the prime minister in December, and we continued our conversation. We shared that Google is investing USD 10 billion in the India digitisation fund and we are continuing to invest through that, including in companies working on artificial intelligence. As part of that, we have a 100-language initiative. We are bringing bot to more Indian languages very soon, Pichai said.
The prime minister's vision for Digital India was ahead of its time. I now see it as a blueprint that other countries are looking to do so, the Google CEO said.
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