At 48, Sundar Pichai is amongst the world’s youngest technology titans and also one of the highest paid. The India-born CEO of Alphabet Inc (with a market cap of $1.5 trillion) is now setting his sights on expanding Google’s footprint in the world’s fifth largest economy. In an exclusive interview with ET’s Surabhi Agarwal & Raghu Krishnan, Pichai laid out his vision for Google’s digital ambitions in the country of his birth. Excerpts:
Will this $10-billion fund make lots of venture-type investments in small companies or will it be used to buy large stakes in big companies?
I don’t want to comment on any specific companies. We are definitely going to look at both, a combination of venture capital — we have been doing it through Google Ventures in India and scaling them that way — but definitely, given the size of the digitisation fund, there is opportunity to directly invest in bigger companies as well. Both are in the mix, as also infrastructure investments (such as) data centres. We expect a large portion of this (fund) to go into actually investing in Indian companies.
What is your view on the proposal to get companies like Google and Amazon to share anonymous data with the government?
I definitely see the opportunity to use technology to drive social good, in health, there are elements everywhere. We’ve done it in education, our recent work in flood forecasting in India, is (also) a good example. We are definitely happy to partner with governments in compliance with laws, in a democratic society you have the right framework.
Source: Economic Times
