Want to provide Indian companies with AI, tech to help scale up ideas: Pichai at HTLS

Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai said on Friday he sees India as a place where his company will be able to build things and take globally over time.

Speaking at the 19th edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS), Pichai said it is not just about transforming how Google’s products evolve, “it's helping other industries transform”.

"Through Google cloud, we are bringing it to all companies in the world and providing APIs," the Madurai-born Pichai said while speaking with Hindustan Times’ editor-in-chief R Sukumar on the third day of HTLS.

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Google is trying to design a high-quality smartphone at affordable prices in a way that is localised for the needs of the Indian market, he added.

Just last month, the much-anticipated JioPhone Next, a budget Android-based smartphone made by Google and Jio Platforms, went on sale. The JioPhone Next runs on Pragati OS, an operating system powered by an “extremely optimised” version of Android which includes other customised features - including translating text on the screen to as many as 10 Indian languages.

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Pichai-led Google has been trying to expand its outreach in India with budget smartphones for a while, and the JioPhone Next is its latest attempt at establishing its base among the masses. It has done it with the help of telecom giant Jio, operated by the Reliance Group. Pichai noted in 2017 that markets such as India need phones priced at the $30 (around  ₹2,233) point to effectively qualify for mass adoption.

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"We want to provide companies in India with AI and technologies and platforms, so they can scale up their ideas and reach more users," he also said.