Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced two new initiatives for small and medium businesses in India - Digital Unlocked and My Business Websites. Pichai made the announcement at a press event in the national capital today.
The online portal 'My Business' will enable small business to get a website within just 10 minutes, Pichai said.
‘Digital Unlocked' courses have been launched in association with B-school ISB and FICCI, he added.
Referring to Indian SMBs, Pichai 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 digitise.”
Citing a joint study with KPMG that showed 68 percent of the 51 million SMBs in India are offline, Pichai stressed on the need to connect Indian SMBs with the internet.
The KPMG study attributed the lack od understanding of the benfits of digital technology as a major reason for staying offline.
Their digitisation will dramatically increase their contribution to the Indian GDP, the study predicted.
The Digital Unlocked training programme has been built "across online, offline, and mobile", the company said. The offline training, spaced over the next three years, will be conducted in partnership with FICCI - with 5,000 workshops envisioned in 40 Indian cities.
As for the online portion, Google has released 90 self-paced video tutorials that have been curated specifically for India and are available at g.co/digitalunlocked. The company says the trainings are certified by Google, Indian School of Business, and FICCI.
Business Websites is meant to help business have a "rich, optimised mobile digital presence". It will be launched later this year for Google My Business users. The service lets businesses easily create a mobile optimised website for free.
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