8 JANUARY2023IN FOCUSIndia-born Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai declared that the search engine is placing more emphasis on startups from India as part of its $10 billion India Digitization Fund (IDF), which will be released in 2020 to advance India's digital economy. At the Google For India 2022 event on December 19th, he declared, "One-fourth of the $300 million acquired from the IDF will be used for helping startups headed by women". "The pace of technological change in the country has been extraordinary", Pichai said during a fireside chat at the event with Telecommunications and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. "Google is supporting small businesses and startups, investing in cyber security, providing education and skills training, and applying AI (Artificial Intelligence) in sectors like agriculture and healthcare".In order to speed up the adoption of digital services, Google said in July 2020 that it would invest $10 billion in India over the following five to seven years. "I'm here to see progress being made from our $10 billion, 10-year India Digitisation Fund (IDF), and share new ways. We're helping to advance India's digital future at our Google for India event", Pichai stated in his blog post. This includes our attempts to create a single, unified AI model that can handle over 100 Indian languages across speech and text as part of our global goal to put the 1,000 most spoken languages online and enable individuals to access knowledge and information in their native tongue. GOOGLE WILL FUND $75 MILLION IN EARLY-STAGE FIRMS WITH FEMALE FOUNDERSONE-FOURTH OF THE $300 MILLION ACQUIRED FROM THE IDF WILL BE USED FOR HELPING STARTUPS HEADED BY WOMEN
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