Google I/O Connect 2024: Project Vaani, AI support for Indian startups, and other key highlights

Google held the second edition of its annual Google I/O Connect event in Bengaluru on Wednesday. Developer productivity and innovation, startups, artificial intelligence (AI), and Cloud were the overarching themes of the event. Following are the key highlights from Google I/O Connect 2024.

Partnership with MeitY Startup Hub

Google is partnering with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to support 10,000 Indian startups for AI innovation. Selected startups will be offered $350,000 in Google Cloud credits for investing in Google Cloud infrastructure and computational power required for AI.

Additionally, the startups will be offered AI-first programming and curriculum through its programs such as Appscale Academy and Startup School, helping them with skills, knowledge, and mentorship.

In related news, on Monday, Google invested in Moving Tech, the parent company of open-source ridesharing app Namma Yatri. In the Series A funding round that Blume Ventures and Antler led, the startup raised $11 million. To be sure, Namma Yatri operates on the government-backed initiative Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), of which Google is a close partner.

Developer tools and API

More than 1.5 million developers globally use Google’s foundational AI model Gemini across its tools. Google AI Studio which makes Gemini available to developers has one of the largest Indian developer user base, the company said. In a bid to attract more developers and help them with new avenues of innovation, Google introduced the availability of India-centric APIs.

It includes Google Wallet APIs to simplify the integration of loyalty programs, tickets, and gift cards. For developers using Google Maps Platform, India-specific pricing is being introduced with up to 70% lower costs on most APIs and Google is also collaborating with ONDC, offering developers building for ONDC up to 90% off on select Google Maps Platform APIs.

Expansion of Project Vaani

Google DeepMind announced that the Indic language initiative Project Vaani, initiated in partnership with IISc, is now being expanded. It will have 14,000 hours of speech data across 58 languages, collected from 80,000 speakers in 80 districts. The team also introduced IndicGenBench, a benchmark to evaluate the generation capabilities of LLMs in Indic languages.

Further, Google open-sourced CALM (Composition of Language Models), a framework that allows developers to combine specialised language models with Gemma models.