Today, Google announced a collaboration with MeitY’s ‘Startup Hub’ to train one lakh startups on AI. This move underscores Google planning to empower startups in India by opening access to its artificial intelligence models and releasing new language tools for developers. At the ‘I/O Connect’ event, Google unveiled numerous applications, programs, initiatives, and partnerships aimed at bolstering the Indian developer and startup ecosystems to dominate worldwide artificial intelligence efforts.

Google stated that thanks to Gemini 1, developing agents in India can have much more extensive access to Google’s sophisticated models built on AI techniques. 5 Pro and Gemma 2, with an extended context window of two million tokens. The following updates serve as the next generation of open models meant to improve the capabilities of the developers in the region.

Ambharish Kenghe, Vice President, Google, said, "We're committed to empowering Indian innovators to harness AI's full potential, creating solutions that not only address India's unique needs but also shape the future of AI globally.” He expressed excitement about participating in India's AI advancements, emphasizing the vast potential of multimodal, mobile, and multilingual AI technologies.

Expansion of Project Vaani with IISc Partnership

The company stated, "The fastest way to build with Gemini is through its developer platform, Google AI Studio, and India has one of the largest developer bases on Google AI Studio today.”

Google DeepMind's India team, in partnership with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), has expanded Project Vaani. This initiative offers developers access to a comprehensive dataset of over 14,000 hours of speech data. The data spans 58 languages and has been gathered from 80,000 speakers across 80 districts.

Google planning to empower
Image Source:
The Verge

Additionally, the team introduced IndicGenBench, a thorough benchmark designed to assess the generation capabilities of large language models (LLMs) across Indic languages. They also open-source CALM (Composition of Language Models). Google also announced the introduction of Google Wallet APIs, aimed at streamlining the integration process for loyalty programs, tickets, and gift cards.

Google has announced that it will be offering developers in India special pricing for the Google Maps Platform that lowers the price impact per API anywhere between fifty and seventy percent. Furthermore, it has made contact with the Open Network for Digital Commerce, or simply ONDC; developers working on applications of ONDC get up to 90% discounts on particular Google Maps Platform APIs.

Seshu Ajjarapu, Senior Director, Google DeepMind, said,From consumer experiences to agriculture to social enterprises, AI has the power to address some of the biggest challenges of our time across many sectors and industries.” Google is preparing the Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API, which will help increase the effectiveness of agricultural activities based on technological solutions.

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