India To Get Global Fintech Operations Centre In Gujarat: Google CEO Pichai

Search engine giant Google will launch its global fintech operation centre at GIFT City in Gujarat, its CEO Sundar Pichai said on Friday. The announcement came after his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Today we are announcing the opening of our global fintech operations centre in GIFT City, Gujarat. It will cement India's fintech leadership, thanks to UPI, and Aadhaar. We are going to build on that foundation and take it globally," Pichai said.

The Google CEO shared his excitement over India's progress around the vision of Digital India and the economic opportunity. "I met the prime minister in December, and we continued our conversation. We shared that Google is investing USD 10 billion in the India digitisation fund and we are continuing to invest through that, including in companies working on artificial intelligence. As part of that, we have a 100-language initiative. We are bringing bot to more Indian languages very soon," the Indian-origin CEO said.

Pichai hailed PM Modi's Digital India initiative, calling it ahead of its time. "I now see it as a blueprint that other countries are looking to do so," he added.

The Ministry of External Affairs in a Tweet said Prime Minister Modi invited Pichai to explore further avenues of collaboration in the domains of artificial intelligence, fintech, and cybersecurity products and services, as well as mobile device manufacturing in India.

They also discussed collaboration between Google and academic institutions in India to promote research and development, and skill development, the ministry added.

Google, in July 2020, had announced plans to invest USD 10 billion in India over the next five to seven years as the search giant looks to help accelerate adoption of digital services in the key overseas market.

Besides Pichai, the Prime Minister met many CEOs of MNCs that include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and AMD CEO Lisa Su, among others

Meanwhile, PM Modi concluded his maiden State Visit to the United States and he departed for Egypt for a two-day visit to the Arab nation. "Concluding a very special USA visit, where I got to take part in numerous programmes and interactions aimed at adding momentum to the India-USA friendship. Our nations will keep working together to make our planet a better place for the coming generations," tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi.