After meeting PM Modi, Sundar Pichai calls on EAM Jaishankar

After the meeting, he said that it is inspiring to see the rapid pace of technological change under his leadership.

New Delhi, Dec 20: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and discussed India's digital transformation and global strategic developments.

Taking to Twitter, Jaishankar said, "Great to meet CEO, @Google and Alphabet, @sundarpichai today afternoon. Discussed India's digital transformation and global strategic developments."

A day ago, Pichai had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After the meeting, he said that it is inspiring to see the rapid pace of technological change under his leadership.

The CEO of Google and Alphabet stated that he looked forward to continuing strong partnership and supporting India's G20 presidency to advance open internet that works for all. "Thank you for a great meeting today PM @narendramodi. Inspiring to see the rapid pace of technological change under your leadership. Look forward to continuing our strong partnership and supporting India's G20 presidency to advance an open, connected internet that works for all, Pichai said in a tweet.

India formally assumed G20 Presidency on December 1 this year from Indonesia.

Pichai had attended the 8th edition of the Google for India event, with Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology in attendance.
Speaking at the occasion, the Google CEO said, "It is easy to build something which scales across the entire country and this is the opportunity that India has. There's no better moment to do a startup, even though we are working through a macro-economic situation right now."

"It's always special to come back to India, and this trip is significant as it's my first visit back since the pandemic. As we come out of it, there's a sense of optimism about the country's future and the role technology can play to improve lives," he added.

The Google CEO said he is here to see progress being made from our USD 10 billion, 10-year India Digitization Fund (IDF), and share new ways helping to advance India's digital future. "That includes our efforts to build a single, unified AI model that will be capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across speech and text - part of our global effort to bring the world's 1,000 most-spoken languages online and to help people access knowledge and information in their preferred language. We're also supporting a new, multidisciplinary centre for responsible AI with IIT Madras," said Pichai.