Google India ties up with MeitY to upskill 10,000 local startups in Artificial Intelligence

Budding startups with the potential to solve real-world problems will be eligible to get up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits, an AI-first programming curriculum, and Google will offer a launchpad to expand their services nationwide.

Search engine giant Google on Wednesday (July 17) hosted the second edition of the I/O Connect in Bengaluru.

During the event, it announced several new generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) initiatives and collaboration with Indian government to offer help to budding startups to train in AI technology.

Google in collaboration with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)’s Startup Hub will train up to 10,000 startups in AI.

The company will provide access to its Gen AI models such as Gemini and Gemma. Also, it will offer new language tools from Google DeepMind India, to help startup offer services in local languages.  

Budding startups with potential to solve real-world problems will be eligible to get up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits, AI-first programming curriculum, and Google will offer launchpad to expand their services nationwide. 

Further, developers in India will now have expanded access to Google powerful AI models with the two million token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, the new generation multimodal Large Language Models (LMMs). Google also announced that it would host GenAI Hackathon and AI Startup Bootcamp in India. 

 “At Google, we’ve been investing in AI for over a decade, driving fundamental advancements that have led us to the exciting Gemini era. AI is a powerful enabler and a major inflection point that will require us to continuously reimagine what’s possible. We’re committed to empowering Indian innovators to harness AI’s full potential, creating solutions that not only address India’s unique needs but also shape the future of AI globally. The opportunities with multimodal, mobile, and multilingual AI are immense, and we’re thrilled to be a part of India,” said Ambharish Kenghe, Vice President, Google.

Ambarish Kenghe, Vice President, Google at Google I/O Connect 2024 event in Bengaluru on July 17, 2024.

The search engine giant has also lowered the fees to use its services such as Google Maps Platform. India-specific pricing has reduced by up to 70 per cent on most APIs. 

And, Google is also collaborating with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). Developers building for ONDC get up to 90 per cent off on select Google Maps Platform APIs.

The news comes on the heels of Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal announcing cutting ties with Google Maps and starting his own map solutions -- Ola Maps. It will also be made available to Indian developers.

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