Google on its fifth annual ‘Google For India’ event on Thursday, 19th September 2019 shared its steps and initiatives in order to strengthen its presence in the country. Already Google has taken some initiatives like Google has recently launched an artificial intelligence (AI) research lab in Banglore, introduces 7 Local Indian languages in its Google Search, and is now planning to provide job opportunities.
In India, Google is incorporating the job search inside the Goggle Pay app because the app has strong reach in the country. According to Google, the app has 67 million users in India and supports the National Payments Corporation of India’s United Payment Interface (UPI) transactions. Google already runs a Jobs platform as a standalone app in Bangladesh and Indonesia.
Google’s General Manager, Payments, and Vice President Caesar Sengupta said:
Google has already partnered with Swiggy, Dunzo, 24Seven, Fabhotels and HealthKart to post jobs on the platform in a bid to help riders, delivery personnel, retail executives, etc., find part-time and entry-level jobs.
The “Spot” platform of Google Pay will include the job search. This allows third parties to build customized experiences inside Google Pay. Spots also includes the Spot Cards, which have both QR codes and NFC antennae on them to allow access to users. Tapping a Spot Card or scanning the code via an Android phone opens Google Pay and shows the customer the experience the merchant has created. For instance, MakeMyTrip’s Spot Cards will show its ticketing platform inside Google Pay. MakeMyTrip, Urban Clap, Eat. Fit and RedBus are among the first partners for this platform.
Google pay uses tokenization technology, to allow for the use of debit and credit cards while using Google Pay, which works by hiding the card number from a merchant and enables instant sharing of a digital token to authenticate transactions.
Paytm give strong competition to Google Pay, as Paytm is the leader in mobile payments in India. As of June 2019, Paytm had an estimated 350 million registered users. Google, though, is taking a different route by integrating jobs with the app.
About AI Lab:
At the event, Google announced Google Research India—an AI-lab based out of Bengaluru.
“We look forward to engaging with everything from academic institutions, to government to the industry and startup ecosystem in the country in the field of AI,” said Jay Yagnik, vice president, and Engineering Fellow, Google.
The AI lab will be a foster for India’s AI community and contribute to the company’s global AI initiatives as well. Google didn’t mention how big the lab will be, but said it will be a “large investment”. The lab will be led by Manish Gupta, a renowned computer scientist, and Google Assistant to 2G an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fellow.
Google Assistant for 2G users:
Google also announced a tie-up with Vodafone-Idea for a new phone line to call its AI assistant, Google Assistant for 2G and feature phone users. The company also said its Google Assistant function will now support seven new local languages in India, bring the total to nine languages.