July 5, 2023: Google CEO Sundar Pichai met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington and shared information about Google opening a global fintech centre in Gujarat. Continue reading to learn more about it!
The State visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States resulted in significant accomplishments for Gujarat, his home state, as it was followed by Google's announcement of the establishment of a Global FinTech Operations Center in GIFT City, also known as Gujarat International Finance Technology City in Gandhinagar in Gujarat.
GIFT City is India's first operational greenfield smart city and international financial services centre, which the Government of Gujarat promoted as a greenfield project and is in the process of being built. It is the business district in Gandhinagar.
Financial technology (better known as fintech) is used to describe new technology that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. At its core, fintech is used to help companies, business owners, and consumers better manage their financial operations, processes, and lives. It is made up of specialised software and algorithms that can be found in smartphones and computers.
The Google and Alphabet CEOs stated they shared with the Prime Minister about Google investing $10 billion, which is approximately equal to 1000 crore rupees (INR) in India's digitization fund.
When Google CEO Sundar Pichai met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 23, 2023, in Washington, D.C., he stated that it will cement India’s fintech leadership with the help of UPI (unified payments interface), which is a way to move money from one bank account to another using a single window, and RR (a 12-digit code assigned to each transaction to track it and is an essential part of the UPI payment system used for tracking each transaction), and they are going to build on that foundation and take it global.
Additionally, he added, “I think the opportunity for India to make more progress with the advent of AI (artificial intelligence) is definitely exciting.”
The Indian-origin CEO stated that it is exciting to observe the country's progress, particularly in relation to the vision of Digital India, which is a flagship program of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society, a knowledge economy, and an economic opportunity.
Moreover, he added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for a digital India was somewhat radical. Pichai said that he currently sees it as a diagram that different nations are hoping to follow.
The Ministry of external affairs, through a source, stated that PM Narendra Modi had invited Mr. Pichai to investigate additional opportunities for collaboration in the fields of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, fintech, and mobile device manufacturing in India. The ministry added that they also talked about how Google and Indian academic institutions could work together to encourage skill development and research and development.
