On Monday, Google announced that it will invest $ 10 billion in India in the coming years. Two days later, the company revealed a key detail: Almost half of the money will go to a top telecom operator owned by the richest man in Asia.
The Internet giant will invest $ 4.5 billion in Jio Platforms as part of a plan to “increase access for hundreds of millions in India who don’t own a smartphone,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted on Wednesday. Mukesh Ambani, the owner of Jio, has a net worth of more than $ 70 billion.
Google first presented the $ 10 Billion Digitization Fund for India on Monday at an online event with key Google executives, including Pichai and members of the Indian government. The company said the money will go toward providing Indians with low-cost internet access, digitizing the country’s small and medium-sized businesses, and using artificial intelligence in areas such as healthcare, agriculture and education.
In recent years, India has become a key market for large American tech companies as they seek growth beyond the United States and Europe. More than 500 million Indians, just under half of the country’s population, are now online, and almost all use inexpensive smartphones running Google’s Android operating system.
Most of that growth has been fueled by Jio. Ambani, an industrialist, founded Jio and pumped it in with $ 35 billion to cover the country with a high-speed 4G network, bringing the price of data down to pennies. The move launched a telecommunications price war in India and made Jio the largest telecommunications operator in the country with almost 370 million subscribers, more than the entire population of the United States. Jio plans to grow by implementing Internet-driven services such as e-commerce, TV streaming, music services, online games, and video conferencing applications.
As part of Jio’s investment, Google and Jio will also work together to create an affordable entry-level Android smartphone for more than 500 million Indians who still don’t have Internet access, both companies said.
In the past three months, investors around the world have invested $ 20 billion in Jio Platforms. In April, Facebook announced that it would buy almost 10% of the company for $ 5.7 billion. Facebook’s investment was followed by U.S. private equity firms General Atlantic, Vista Equity Partners and Silver Lake Partners, as well as chip giants Intel and Qualcomm.
