Google Plans New Campus At Hyderabad, More Net Access: Pichai

New Delhi, Google will build a new campus at Hyderabad, hire more people even as it is working towards including as many people as possible to use the internet in India, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said here on Wednesday.

“In our attempt to provide internet access to people, we have decided to provide Wi-Fi in 400 railway stations with RailTel. The first 100 stations will come online by 2016 end. Mumbai Central station will be online by early January,” Pichai said at “Google for India” event here.

This was also a part of the assurance Google gave to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited the search engine giant’s headquarters at Mountain View, Santa Clara county, in California in September this year.

Regarding the company’s expansion plans in India, Pichai said: “We will ramp up our engineering investments at our Bangalore and Hyderabad facilities.”

“We will also build a huge new campus in Hyderabad,” he said, but did not disclose the amount of investment. The company now has 1,500 employees in India.

“This country has given me and Google so much and I just hope we can give much more to the country,” Pichai said, adding, “a lot of what today is about is how we build products for the next billion Indian users, yet to come online.”

This was Pichai’s first visit to India after he became the CEO of restructured Google in August.

The company is starting training programmes for two million new Android developers over the next three years that will make it easier for Indian developers to build solutions to local problems. The online search giant is also partnering with National Skill Development Council for this.

Pichai on Wednesday laid out Google’s three-step approach to promoting the internet in India.

First, Google aims to give people in India and other developing countries better access to full internet through better connectivity and high-quality software.

Second, Google is making Google products work better for Indians.

And Google wants to make it easier for Indians to build on top of Google’s global platforms like Android and Chrome to build solutions to local problems.

Talking about the company’s research and development project, Loon, Pichai said it will help providing internet connectivity in rural India.

He also pointed out how women are lagging behind in internet usage in India and underlined that it is important that sizeable women should have access to internet.

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