Author Archives: Sanjay Gupta

Broadening our COVID-19 support in India

As the pandemic has unfolded in India, it’s been humbling and inspiring to see individuals, communities, institutions, and governments work together to manage the impact of a crisis on a scale we haven’t experienced before. Technology has played a critical role, and our focus at Google has been on making sure people have the information and tools they need to stay informed, connected, and safe.  


We have worked to surface timely and reliable health information, amplify public health campaigns, and help nonprofits get urgent support to Indians in need. In April, through our philanthropic arm Google.org, we announced grants totaling $18 million (135 Crore INR) to expand the reach of public health information campaigns and support emergency relief work. 

Today, as India slowly emerges from the crisis of the past few months, we are turning our focus to helping strengthen India’s healthcare infrastructure and workforce — especially in rural areas.

Building on our overall COVID-19 response, we are announcing new commitments to GiveIndia, PATH, Apollo Medskills and ARMMAN, focused on setting up oxygen generation plants and expanding the health workforce by strengthening COVID-19 management skills among frontline workers. 


Google.org will support procurement and installation of approximately 80 oxygen generation plants in healthcare facilities in high-need and rural locations with new grants totalling approximately $15 million (109 Crore INR) to GiveIndia and PATH. The two organizations will work together to oversee the oxygen program, providing project management support. PATH will identify the target locations and provide technical assistance, working with state governments and other authorities, and complete the installation of the plants. 


As part of our new commitment, Google is also investing in the efforts of Apollo Medskills to help upskill 20,000 frontline health workers through specialized training in COVID-19 management. This will complement and strengthen the stressed rural health workforce and rural health systems. 


To further bolster these efforts, Google.org will provide a $500,000 (3.6 Crore INR) grant to nonprofit ARMMAN. ARMMAN will run skilling programs for 180,000 Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and 40,000 Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) in 15 Indian states. It will also set up a call center to provide additional help and advice for ASHAs and ANMs where required.

Google is proud to be supporting these organizations as they build a bigger, better-equipped healthcare workforce, help India steady itself after the pandemic’s second wave and lay the foundations for a sustainable healthcare system over the longer term.

Supporting India during the current COVID crisis

Right now India is going through our most difficult moment in the pandemic thus far. Daily COVID-19 cases continue to set record highs, with hospitals filled to capacity and in need of urgent supplies to cope with the increasing number of patients. 


Our Google community and their families are feeling the devastating impact, too. We’re asking ourselves what more we can do as a company to ensure people get the information and support they need to keep their families and communities healthy and safe.


Today we’re announcing 135 Crore INR ($18 million USD) in new funding for India. This includes two grants from Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, totalling 20 Crore INR ($2.6 million USD). The first is to GiveIndia to provide cash assistance to families hit hardest by the crisis to help with their everyday expenses. The second will go to UNICEFto help get urgent medical supplies, including oxygen and testing equipment, to where it’s needed most in India. It also includes donations from our ongoing employee giving campaign — so far more than 900 Googlers have contributed 3.7 Crore INR ($500,000 USD) for organizations supporting high-risk and marginalized communities. 


This funding also includes increased Ad Grant support for public health information campaigns. Since last year, we’ve helped MyGov and the World Health Organization reach audiences with messages focused on how to stay safe and facts about vaccines. We’re increasing our support today with an additional 112 Crore INR ($15 million) in Ad Grants to local health authorities and nonprofits for more language coverage options.

Three phones displaying COVID-19 information in Search in three different languages

COVID-19 vaccine information on Search is available in English and eight Indian languages

We know the biggest way we can help is through our core information products like Search and Maps, YouTube and Ads. Our COVID features on Search are available in India, in English and eight Indian languages, and we continue to improve localization and highlight authoritative information. That includes information on where to get testing and vaccines; so far, Maps and Search surface thousands of vaccine sites, and we are working to add tens of thousands more. We’re also collaborating closely with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, and with organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to support vaccine awareness initiatives. 


On YouTube, we are supporting the government in their vaccine communication strategy, as well as working to raise up authoritative information and reduce misinformation. We recently ran a workshop for 200+ health officials to learn how they can use YouTube to reach audiences across Indian languages with vaccine information. And we’ve added support for public donations for several nongovernmental organizations on Google Pay.


I am hopeful that the situation will turn around for our country soon, but as we have learned over the course of this pandemic, hope is not enough. At Google we’ll continue to work with local governments, partners and communities to give people the tools to stay healthy and safe. We’ll get through this tough time together.

Bringing internet access to millions more Indians with Jio

Today we signed an agreement to invest $4.5 billion (INR 33,737 crore) in Jio Platforms Ltd, taking a 7.73 percent stake in the company, pending regulatory review in India. This is the first investment from the Google For India Digitization Fund announced earlier this week, which aims to accelerate India’s digital economy over the next five to seven years through a mix of equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments. 


Google and Jio Platforms have entered into a commercial agreement to jointly develop an entry-level affordable smartphone with optimizations to the Android operating system and the Play Store. Together we are excited to rethink, from the ground up, how millions of users in India can become owners of smartphones. This effort will unlock new opportunities, further power the vibrant ecosystem of applications and push innovation to drive growth for the new Indian economy.


This partnership comes at an exciting but critical stage in India’s digitization. It’s been amazing to see the changes in technology and network plans that have enabled more than half a billion Indians to get online. At the same time, the majority of people in India still don’t have access to the internet, and fewer still own a smartphone—so there’s much more work ahead. 


Our mission with Android has always been to bring the power of computing to everyone, and we’ve been humbled by the way Indians have embraced Android over recent years. We think the time is right to increase our commitment to India significantly, in collaboration with local companies, and partnership with Jio is the first step. We want to work with Jio and other leaders in the local ecosystem to ensure that smartphones—together with the apps and services in the Play Store—are within reach for many more Indians across the country. And we believe the pace of Indian innovation means that the experiences we create for India can ultimately be expanded to the rest of the world.  


For Google, our work in India goes to the heart of our efforts to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible. We opened our first Indian campuses in Bangalore and Hyderabad in 2004. Since then, we’ve made India central to our Next Billion Users initiative—designed to ensure the internet is useful for people coming online for the first time. We’ve improved our apps and services so they’re relevant in more Indian languages and created offline versions for those facing network constraints. We’ve extended our tools to small businesses, sought to close digital divides with initiatives like Internet Saathi, and we’re increasingly focused on helping India harness AI. More and more, apps we create for India—like GPay or our Read Along language-learning app—influence what we do globally. 


Jio, for its part, has made an extraordinary contribution to India’s technological progress over the past decade. Its investments to expand telecommunications infrastructure, low-cost phones and affordable internet have changed the way its hundreds of millions of subscribers find news and information, communicate with one another, use services and run businesses. Today, Jio is increasing its focus on the development of areas like digital services, education, healthcare and entertainment that can support economic growth and social inclusion at a critical time in the country’s history. 


In partnership, we can draw on each other’s strengths. We look forward to bringing smartphone access to more Indians—and exploring the many ways we can work together to improve Indians’ lives and advance India’s digital economy.