At a special event today in New Delhi, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took center stage to reaffirm the tech behemoth’s commitment towards a Digital India. With regard to the same, he announced the launch of Digital Unlocked initiative along with a preview of My Business Websites that’ll benefit small and medium scale businesses in the country.
Starting off his keynote, Pichai directed his sole focus towards the upliftment of SMBs in the country with increased use of web and digital technologies. Currently, according to a joint research study conducted by Google and KPMG, India has over 51 million SMBs out of which 68 percent of them are offline.
They’re seen as an important part of the country’s economy as they contribute 37 percent towards the GDP. And the tech behemoth is now of the opinion that backing these businesses with digital assets will enable them to scale their reach globally, taking India’s GDP a notch up to 46-48 percent by 2020. Speaking about the same, Pichai further added,
The Internet and digital technology will be an engine of growth for the Indian economy. Today, anyone can become an entrepreneur, a developer, or a creator, but it is important that they have the right tools and skills to digitize. We believe it is important for us to invest in training and equipping these individuals and small businesses to accelerate their journey of growth.
Now, Google is looking to bridge the technological gap by imparting these skills to entrepreneurs and SMB owners through a new initiative called Digital Unlocked. It is a training program that’ll enable them to go online and grow their business using tools provided by Google for enterprises.
Due to the varied availability of resources across the country, the company has made the programme material available online, offline and mobile in Hindi as well as English. Also, Google will be conducting 5,000 workshops across 40 cities over the next three years in partnership with FICCI. The official blog post defines the same as under:
The online training comprises a set of 90 self-paced video tutorials, curated specifically for India and is available free of charge. The tutorials cover a comprehensive set of topics ranging from building a web presence and driving online growth toreaching customers over mobile and video.
In addition, Pichai also previewed My Business Website which is aimed at providing businesses with a platform for creating a free, mobile optimised website, easily and instantly. This platform, launching later this year, will provide them easy access to simple, templated, editable websites created using their data and photos from Google Maps. It will be made available in a multitude of regional languages as well.
This has further been complemented with the release of Primer — a free mobile app available on iOS and Android — which has been designed to teach digital marketing skills to India’s mobile-first audience. It imparts knowledge in a quick and intuitive manner, works offline and is also accessible in regional languages.
Those interested in taking their business online can go to the Digital Unlocked website and register to attend the nearest workshop to learn more about the same.
