Google interested in PM’s Digital India initiative

Google is the latest tech company to express interest in prime minister Narendra Modi's Digital India initiative to transform the country into an IT superpower and provide internet access to all, mobiletor.com reported.

Modi is also known to be keenly interested tapping the $15-billion potential of the Internet of Things. After Microsoft's Nadella was seen meeting with communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and other important leaders recently, Google too seems to be following a similar strategy to expand its business in the country.

Google's chief internet evangelist Vinton Cerf, had reportedly spoken with Prasad about the role Google could play in the Digital India venture. Included in the subjects that were touched upon was the way web access in India could be improved. Microsoft had already put  forward a proposal involving using white space spectrum to provide last mile data connectivity.

"It is in a very early stage of discussion. Google is interested in being helpful. We have some ideas. We want to share with them (government) those ideas to find out which of them makes sense. May be, they will have better ideas than us," Cerf told reporters on the sidelines of a Ficci event, PTI reported.

"It is very clear that private sector is going to have to play a major role, but it won't work unless basic infrastructure that government proposes to bring in is out into place," he said.

The government in August last year approved an umbrella programme, Digital India, comprising various projects with over Rs 1 lakh crore outlay for transformation of the country into a digitally empowered knowledge economy.

The programme included projects aimed at ensuring government services were available to citizens electronically and people got benefit of the latest information and communication technology.