There's been a recent surge in American companies investing in India primarily through Reliance Jio (owned by Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government). It's been spiking since the Anti-China sentiment led Buy and Use 'Made in India' cries. Government has even asked eCom Flipkart and Amazon to display Country of Origin for each product.

With all these, This investment from Google seems another strategic move by an American company to say that we're truly concerned about Indian growth. So that their development centers here or products made for India don't get flagged as American.

Reference - Foxconn, Intel, Qualcomm, Facebook

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/apple-sup...

https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/12/qualcomm-to-invest-97-mill...

https://www.cnet.com/news/after-facebook-intel-invests-into-...

China is aging.

China population https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/

vs

India population https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2020/

China will never develop a consumption based economy with its aging population. It takes Europe, decades for its population to age. It only take Japan 25 years to age like Europe and China's one child policy is not helping and its on track to age like Japan.

It's only a logical decision to go to India for its young population and most Indian speak English. If only India is more friendly to foreign business and can do what CCP did. (central planning) I think India can surpass China to became number two largest economy.

Getting the feeling China has blown it and successful companies looking to expand into Asia are now looking at India instead.

I also saw that Foxconn is looking to build Apple products in India now too.

Seems like a headline grabbing thing in the current geopolitical context. They are stating $10B in the next 5-7 years. Quite sure a company like Google would have a spend like that earmarked from way before in one of the big emerging markets like India. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google all have been working towards this for a while now.

It is fairly routine for foreign companies to tout ther investments into their host countries’ economies. The headline figure is usually chosen for its marketing value rather than to fit any kind of GAAP definition.The real investment levels may not always match.

It's hard to know what's going on here.

Will it actually be 10bn? Only time will tell...

Doing what (sales, dev, support, research)? Is this new productive activity or just outsourcing?

Why? Is this hedging the risks of China sanctions/user rejection? or the risks of Indian nationalism? or honestly wanting a more local input on the Indian market/economy? or a moral decision given China going from bad to worse? Is it just outsourcing to a low cost country? A mix of all these?

Reading the faff, it sounds like they're selling this in a similar way to Google fibre: we'll invest to inspire/shame others into doing their job and also to create a market by showing people what is available.

Interestingly I imagine 10bn USD goes a long long way in India. So this could be a huge boon for some local areas of India, so that's nice.

First Facebook invests $6bn in India with Jio and now Google. There is a lot of potential in the growing Indian consumer base.

- 2nd most populated country on the internet

- english speaking is wide spread

- adoption towards 'an app for everything' has grown substantially in the past decade.

So far, I think Google has invested in FreshWorks and Dunzo. I don't think there was a lot of active participation so far, this might change now.

How do I read a Techcrunch article without going through guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers first?

Here's the Times of India, anyway: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/google-to...

Nature of these investments seems to be somewhat different. These investment are more towards infrastructure, rural skilling, education etc.

There were couple of ministers who were part of the announcement (unlike other corporate investment announcement like that of recent FB one, where govt officials would never make an appearance); one of the ministers even extorted Google to adopt cluster of villages and make them 'Digital' ones.

https://youtu.be/GwJJw2fE8T4?t=1625

This $10 Billion (!) investment is not in the same league as that of FB, Intel, Saudi investment in Reliance Jio.

If Google has agreed to store user data locally/share it with the government in exchange for favourable policies/government turning a blind eye to its monopolistic position, its a very cheap price for what would be basically a win-win deal for both parties. The product i.e. extremely price-sensitive average Indian voter/consumer doesn't care much about privacy anyway.

I suggest this is nothing less than a play to control India's core infrastructure, the first truly digital economy ala the WEF's 4th revolution. The challenge will be how monopolistic this is and how democratic imo

https://www.ft.com/content/431e50fb-eedc-44f7-9c36-d85dd9cc2...

'Google said its “India Digitization Fund” would be spread over five to seven years, focusing on affordable internet access, new product development tailored to Indian market needs and accelerating digital transformation, as well as healthcare, education and agriculture. India, with its 1.3bn population, represents one of the biggest opportunities for tech companies globally after hundreds of millions of Indians started using smartphones and accessing the internet in recent years. Google Pay, the company’s digital payments service, has grown rapidly since launching in the country in 2017'.

Between Apple and Google investing heavily in facilities in India, I wonder if this is the writing on the wall that is the start of building up outsourced H1-b teams in economical state-of-the-art headquarters while they transition down their real estate footprint in the Bay Area in the wake of the 'new normal' way of remote working due to Covid-19.

Any predictions for the next 10 years if this will be a threat to on-shore devs considering the braindrain occurring at the direction of our president's myopic leadership and executive orders?

I have mixed feelings about this one, having seen their Capital G investment portfolios before. Let's hope they actually make an impact with this one.

Now let's begin with an analysis: This is the only company in their portfolio doing anything very relevant to helping India: https://ayefin.com/our-products/ The rest are profitable companies - but not like helping Indian economies or anything serving a very large amount of people. It's a micro finance model, very helpful to India (helping businessmen and farmers avoid some terrible loan sharks), however it's a business, not a charity.

Now let's talk motivations. FB recently invested in Jio, and I'm quite sure this was their most successful investment, after the 'Free Basics' idea fell through and all people protested against OTT services being subsidized and the idea of net neutrality. Now, it is well known that if you control the wire, you control the internet. You control the relevance of a website, it's advertising potential and finally, it's net revenue.

FB may have gotten some sweet insider deal from Jio, so Google may now be running helter-skelter to not become the loser in the big picture. Unless Sundar Pitchai got a boost of Indian patriotism and decided to help India, like shown in some recent movies (highly doubt it).

I mean, if they had already done something to boost small startups and create value for India, they had a 12+ year lead, lots of people - and they could have done something. But they did not. Maybe now they'll try to join forces with some telco (Airtel/Vodafone) or something, who knows.

I doubt that kind of money will ever help regular Indians become better or enhance their quality of life. Unless they turned a new leaf, let's hope so.

End Rant

Hope India is not the second China, where they are invested and destroyed when being strong because of threatening America's position.

This is just a PR announcement with no specific timeline or even a plan.

Between Apple and Google heavily investing in Indian facilities , I wonder if this is going to actually lead to physically outsourcing our jobs for real

> Investments will focus on four areas

suddenly, dozens upon dozens of artificial intelligence startup that aims at better health trough translating nutritional information of produce into all the relevant languages and teach deep-learning improved version of traditional dishes to meet growing population need using local scooter forces to deliver fresh produce daily at people offices

Maybe I should move to India. I heard so many success stories from there. I think Australia, Europe and US are on the decline. In Australia and Europe, raising in $20K+ of investment is basically impossible no matter how good you are or how much traction your product has... and you have to compete with well funded startups from other countries.

> Why not invest in the US and the black community?

Because the CEO is Indian.

The $10B would be invested in a period of 5-7 years. With lot of tech investment coming in I guess there is bound to be tech explosion in Indian IT

The entities that control the biosphere no longer need the Western world to survive.

I think the perspective to think is Google is investing despite perceived ‘protectionism’.

With $10 billion investment you can claim Delhi throne; Just saying...

I wonder if this is a response to the recent $1 billion Foxconn investment.

It seems this is how big tech is responding to the VISA lockdown by Trump and co. They will simply leave. They already moved a lot of capital abroad to avoid US taxes. Instead of bringing Indians here, they will go there. The fundamental problem is that large multinationals are playing governments off against each other. Trying to get bigger concessions for the promise of jobs. Ultimately, the working people will suffer the burden of externalities dumped on their communities (pollution, overcrowding, crime, shortages,etc) The multinationals will harvest profits while the local governments are made to look ineffective, corrupt, and inefficient because of these problems.

What an exceptional dumpster fire of a thread. Very very sub-standard by HackerNews standards. I'm dissapointed in the lack of moderation in this one.

The Google Belt and Road Initiative

China is not a democracy anymore.

Why not invest in the US and the black community?

Off Topic: That website has no obvious opt-out option for EU users, just some dark pattern pop-up that also breaks the browser's "back" functionality.

If anyone here works at techcrunch, please feel adequately ashamed about this. Thanks.

Google has been funneling around 20 billion dollars yearly through Bermuda to evade taxes using the infamous 'irish double sandwich'.

Pressure from the US and EU is finally forcing Ireland to change their laws.

Google is in a situation when they have money that they need to figure out a plan for since they can't do as much tax evasion as they previously were permitted to.

https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/01/02/google-to-end-bermu...

It seems to be part of some massive PR campaign. Yesterday, there was similar news about Google's investment in Italy - https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1281128295392661504

CEO is Indian, so makes sense.

What promises has Google ever kept?

Comments on this post are more toxic than expected.

OMG! Its True?

Any idea on the split, what is 10 billion going to, devlopers? Apps? Infra?, What vague shit is this ecosystem..

This isn't too much of a surprise TBH.

Google's business is stagnating in US/EU. They need to find a better place to grow.

Is there even a way for Google to invest in a high-corruption country like India without paying bribes (which would break US anti-bribery laws)? I'm pretty sure such an investment would be impossible in e.g. Russia, where many a hand needs to be greased before anything can happen.

More corporate imperialism. This will only further the wealth gap between domestic companies and companies owned/backed by google.

Is there an Indian-owned search engine? Displaced. Indian-owned news aggregator? Displaced.

Nothing more than the modern day process of creating a banana republic. Rich foreigners with massive amounts of capital can dominate the local business climate, strong lobbying will cement their dominance, and local businesses will have no chance to thrive.