Google CEO Sundar Pichai hails Indian PM's tech lead

Google CEO Sundar Pichai met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday here and said it is inspiring to see the rapid pace of technological change under his leadership.
Pichai, CEO, Google and Alphabet, said he looked forward to continuing strong partnership and supporting India's G20 presidency to advance open internet that works for all.
India formally assumed G20 Presidency on December 1 this year from Indonesia.

Earlier this month, India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu formally handed over Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award, to Sundar Pichai in San Fransisco.
"Delighted to hand over Padma Bhushan to Google CEO Sundar Pichai in San Francisco. His inspirational journey from Madurai to Mountain View, strengthening India-America economic and tech ties, reaffirms Indian talent's contribution to global innovation," Sandhu had said in a tweet.
After receiving the Padma Bhushan, Pichai had thanked Sandhu and the Consul General for hosting me him to receive the Padma Bhushan.
"I am deeply grateful to the Indian government and the people of India for this immense honour. It is incredibly meaningful to be honoured in this way by the country that shaped me," he said.

Pichai recently also highlighted investments in AI that the company shared at Google for India event to make India's digital economy more inclusive, helpful, and safe by introducing a multimodal AI model that covers 100+ Indian languages, ML-powered bilingual search results pages (launching in India first), support for a new centre for responsible AI at IIT Madras.
Speaking at the 8th edition of the Google for India event, with Ashwini Vaishnaw, minister for Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology in attendance, Pichai said, "It is easy to build something which scales across the entire country and this is the opportunity that India has. There's no better moment to do a start-up, even though we are working through a macro-economic situation right now." "It's always special to come back to India, and this trip is significant as it's my first visit back since the pandemic. As we come out of it, there's a sense of optimism about the country's future and the role technology can play to improve lives," he added.
The Google CEO said he is here to see progress being made from our USD 10 billion, 10-year India Digitization Fund (IDF), and share new ways helping to advance India's digital future.

(ANI)