Google on Thursday announced a partnership with Muthoot Finance to offer gold-backed loans through its mobile payments service Gpay. The collaboration was unveiled during the 10th ‘Google for India’ event.
Google celebrates 20 years in India
Roma Dutta Chobe, Managing Director, Google India, highlighted that India has about 11% of the world’s gold, which is one of the key reasons behind the launch of this credit product with competitive interest rates and flexible repayment options.
Additionally, Google also introduced its AI assistant, Gemini Live, which will be available in Hindi from October 3, 2024, with plans to add eight more Indian languages including Bengali, Gujarati, and Tamil in the coming weeks.
According to Hema Budaraju, senior director of product management at Google India, more than 40% of Gemini users connect with the Assistant through voice commands. The AI Overview feature in Google Search will soon be available in Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil as well.
Google completes 20 years in India with AI enhancements and sustainability initiatives
As Google celebrates two decades in India, it revealed its intention to integrate the Beacon-enabled open network with its Gemini AI model through an open-source framework. The initiative will allow Indian businesses and users to access a variety of listings ranging from electronics to educational courses through a voice-command-enabled interface.
Empowering businesses and organizations to securely implement cloud and AI solutions at home, Google is also preparing to launch ‘Gemini Flash 1.5’ in India.
Emphasizing the company’s commitment to partner with Indian innovators to leverage AI for digital inclusion, Bikram Singh Bedi, Vice President and Country MD, Google Cloud India, said Google will set up a security engineering center in India in 2025. and has announced that the long-term objective of the partnership is to increase clean energy production, contributing 186 MW of renewable energy by 2026.
As for the company’s decarbonization efforts, it is also collaborating with Adani Group and CleanMax, which focuses on solar and wind projects, to support Google’s decarbonization efforts.
In addition to all the above, Google.org is giving a $4 million grant through the Central Square Foundation to promote AI literacy in underserved communities.N.