Forty per cent of Google engineers are Indians, company official

Life at Google has not changed much after the elevation of Sundar Pichai as its CEO, as the Internet company has many Indians holding senior positions, Marketing Director for Google India Sandeep Menon said today.

"Well if you look at Google a lot of senior people have been Indians, and so the life has not changed much," Menon told reporters here while responding to a query if there was a change in the mood of the company after India-born Pichai was elevated to Chief Executive Officer's post.

Menon who participated in the Google event showcasing latest product innovations said Indians have always been there working for the company.

"We have Indians such as Amit Singhal as Search Chief and Sridhar Ramaswamy as Ads Senior Vice President. Sundar Pichai has always been senior. Forty per cent engineer based employees would be Indians. So, it is not that there is any dearth of Indians. They have always been there," he said.

Asked when is Pichai expected to visit the country, Menon said, "I cannot say when."

To a query, Menon said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting Pichai on his visit to the Silicon Valley in the US. "They have tweeted to each other and I am hoping they will meet."

On the possibility of Google India sharing details about the investments and budget earmarked in the context of Modi-Pichai meeting, Menon said, "Too early to say anything.

We have been eleven years, it is not that we haven't invested."

Asked about the fallout from Modi-Pichai meeting, Menon said, "Let the big guys meet and decide ...within a month's time we will know what comes out of the meeting."

Talking about technology initiatives taken by Google India for the country's economic growth, Menon said moving from offline to advanced digital engagement could see revenue growth up to 27 percentage points higher for individual small to medium businesses.

India's SMB sector represents more than 8 per cent of GDP and 22 per cent of India's work force, employing more than 106 million people, Menon said.

Specifically, compared to offline SMBs, Indian SMBs with higher digital engagement are job creators, which will in all likelihood help increase 84 per cent employment.

The SMBs with higher digital engagement are exporters, up to 65 per cent are more likely to access international markets, he said.

They are innovators and up to 4.5 times more likely to offer new products or implement major changes in the way they do business, Menon added.

Talking about the new partnership with Tata Trusts and Intel to launch an Internet literacy campaign for women in rural India, Menon said the "Internet Saathi" initiative will aim at enabling women in rural areas to use the Internet and benefit from it in their daily lives.
Tata Trusts, with its well spread on ground NGOs network, will manage the on-ground rollout with its partners whereas Google will invest in providing the Internet-enabled Carts and the training content, Menon said.

The  initiative will reach out to over 4500 villages covering five lakh women across rural India over the next 18 months, he said.

Intel who has been a long-term partner of Google India’s Helping Women Get Online initiative will also support the initiative, Menon said.

"This new initiative will help us to extend our helping women get online outreach to rural India, and since the launch of this initiative, Google has directly trained over 1.5 million women on the basics of the Internet," he said.