Google and MeitY Team Up to Empower 10,000 Indian Startups - News

Google Inc announced a partnership with MeitY’s Startup Hub to train 10,000 startups in artificial intelligence (AI). During the ‘I/O Connect’ event, the company revealed new tools and collaborations aimed at improving support for the country’s developers and startups. These developers now have access to advanced AI models like Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, which significantly aids their capability in harnessing AI technology.

Ambharish Kenghe, Vice President, Google Inc emphasized the company’s dedication to encouraging innovation within the country. In addition, Google’s DeepMind India team has broadened Project Vaani with the Indian Institute of Science, providing 14,000 hours of speech data in 58 languages. The introduction of the IndicGenBench benchmark and the open-sourcing of CALM are expected to further improve language model evaluations.

The company is also launching Google Wallet APIs and has introduced India-specific pricing for the Google Maps Platform. Through its partnership with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), the company is offering substantial discounts on Google Maps APIs for developers. 

Seshu Ajjarapu, Senior Director, Google DeepMind, remarked on AI’s vast potential to address significant challenges across various industries. Looking ahead, the company will soon release the Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API to promote more data-driven agricultural practices.