Google India and the ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) announced new initiatives aimed at empowering citizens.
Some initiatives include enabling a secure digital payments experience, imparting digital skills for artisans and Android skills training for students and developers.
Aruna Sundarajan, MEITY Secretary, and Rajan Anandan, VP SouthEast Asia and India, Google made the announcement in Delhi.
Digital Payments
Google India and MEITY will support the launch of Digital Payments Security Alliance in collaboration with the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) to bring together stakeholders from the ecosystem including banks, fintech companies and Government.
Digital Unlocked for Artisans
Handicrafts industry with over 7 million artisans provides the second largest source of employment in India, after agriculture.
Google India, which had announced Digital Unlocked, a program to impart training to SMBs earlier this year, will extend this training in partnership with MEITY to over 100,000 artisans per year across India.
National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT) will deliver the training. Google India will equip the National Institute trainers with training modules and content. They will do the outreach by leveraging 10,000 NIELIT centers across the country.
Skills development
Google announced the launch of its Android Skilling program with an aim of training two million developers in India. This included developing a specially-designed instructor-led training program course curriculum.
Google will extend this course curriculum to the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) who will in turn train over 100K developers and students through its network of centres.
Other initiatives from Google India and MEITY will include: proliferating the Indic web; enhancing government’s online presence especially on mobile platforms to enable citizen engagement and training and capacity building programs on digital tools.