Google to back women-led startups through digitization fund

Google aims to focus on investing in women-led early-stage startups through its ₹75,000 crore India Digitisation Fund, said a senior company official on Monday. 

The company had launched $10 billion - about ₹75,000 crore as per the prevailing exchange rate at the end of 2020 - to make access to the internet affordable. 

Through Google India Digitisation Fund (IDF), the company bought a 7.73 per cent stake in Jio for $4.5 billion and a 1.2 per cent stake in Bharti Airtel for $700 million.

"Moving forward, as part of our IDF investments, we will be targeting support for early-stage companies with a particular focus on women-led startups," Sanjay Gupta, country manager & vice president, Google India said at Google for India event. 

The company announced several projects powered by artificial intelligence, including speech technology, voice and video search etc.

"With AI, text content can convert to video in an instant...Translations from English to virtually any language are possible at scale. AI can bring quantum leaps in online safety through advanced threat detection," Gupta said. 

The company announced a collaboration with Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science to collect speech data from 773 districts across India to fine-tune its language translation and search technology.

Google announced a grant of $1 million to set up India's first responsible AI centre at IIT Madras.