Key takeaways from Google India CEO Sundar Pichai's keynote at #GoogleForIndia event today

After Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella, India witnessed yet another top global firm CEO Sundar Pichai of Google, reach out to media, developers, entrepreneurs and marketers in the country.

In his first visit to India – in fact one of his first overseas trip – after he took over as the CEO of Google in August this year, Sundar Pichai along with other key executives shared the vision for Indian users and how technology can positively impact lives.

The focus of the company particularly is on making Internet accessible for the next generation of users, who won’t be English speakers.

“India is one of the largest growth markets for the search giant Google globally,” said Chennai-born Pichai while delivering the keynote at the Google for India event in New Delhi. Recognizing the potential of the market here, he made several announcements in support of PM Narendra Modis Digital India Campaign, that you can’t miss:

Women from 3,00,000 villages across India will have access to internet in 3 years:

Pichai said that Google's rural internet programme will move from pilot (where it provided web access to women in a village and apparently, everyone benefitted) to full scale programme in 300,000 villages in India. The company will help women from three lakh villages across India to get online in three years. Google has infact also shared a video on this initiative titled "Internet Saathi".

Focus on investing in India more and developing new products:

Google will invest heavily in not just enabling Internet access in the country but also in making sure that great products are developed in India.

"It makes a lot of sense to invest in India as what we build here will have global usage," he said giving examples of products such as MapMaker, Youtube offline, streamline search etc, which were developed for India and are now widely used globally.

New campus, more hirings in India:

"We will build new campus, ramp up engineering presence in Hyderabad to make products for India; and increase hiring in Bengaluru, Pichai said. The company is also launching a programme to train 2 million developers on its Android platform over the next three years through a partnership with the National Skill development Corporation of India.

WIFI connectivity to 100 railway stations:

Earlier this year Google announced a project to connect 400 Railway stations in the country through Wi-Fi along with RailTel. Pichai said that the project is on track and the first 100 stations will be connected by the end of 2016 and Google is currently running a pilot at the Mumbai Central station which is expected to go live by January next year.

India to have more android users than US

Pichai revealed that in 2016 India will have more Android users than the United States, Google's home market.

Project Loon will come to India.

Project Loon which was announced a couple of years ago will come to India, said Pichai. It is a project Google is working on to bring low cost connectivity to the world. "We are exploring ways of bringing project loon to India, especially rural areas," said Pichai.

(Image credits: BCCL)