As part of its Women Will event on Monday, global technology firm Google revealed a slew of initiatives for women in India.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, announced a $25 million impact fund, funding for one million women entrepreneurs in rural India, and a $500,000 grant in collaboration with the tech industry lobby NASSCOM.
Along with Tata Trusts, the tech behemoth also announced the completion of its Internet Saathi for Women initiative. “We all benefit from women’s experiences, ingenuity, and experience when they have fair access to opportunity, and this is valid all over the world. Deep disparities exist, however, when it comes to accessing opportunity. We’re making a new commitment to help 1 million women in rural villages in India become entrepreneurs through business tutorials, resources, and mentorship, building on the success of the Internet Saathi programme,” said Pichai in a tweet.
“To help the women and girls in India and around the world achieve their full potential the Non-profits and social enterprises are taking necessary efforts”, Sundar Pichai said. ” All these women and girls in India would benefit from the $25 million grant. Applications for the same are being accepted until April 10th.
Meanwhile, the NASSCOM grant will provide digital and financial literacy training to 100,000 women in agriculture across Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh.
Google also announced that women-led search features would be available in its maps app. The features will aid female entrepreneurs by allowing searches for terms such as “women-led” — “women-led restaurants,” “women-led clothing stores,” and so on.
The initiatives follow Pichai’s announcement in July 2020 that Google will invest $10 billion in India through the Google for India Digitization Fund. Google has invested in companies like Reliance Jio, which is run by Mukesh Ambani
