Sundar Pichai in India: Google wants to ensure it's not late for the enterprise party
By Team Asianet Newsable | First Published Jan 4, 2017, 7:14 AM IST- Digital Unlocked is Google's training program for Indian SMBs.
- Small businesses like like Maganlal Dresswalla spoke about using Google's My Business, AdWords and Cloud Platform.
- My Business Websites launched to help businesses with a rich, mobile optimised digital presence.
These days anyone can become an entrepreneur, developer or a creator, if they have the right tools. In India, we've seen a booming startup community and proliferating small businesses. The growing and untapped enterprise market has begun attracting companies.
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Google had some big announcements for SMBs. Google has brought us a bundle of offerings that will cater to small and medium businesses. The key highlight is the Digital Unlocked training program that will empower thousands of Indian SMBs with digital skills. The aim is to bring them online, and needless to say, eventually grow the online business. Besides, Google has previewed the My Business Websites, which is aimed at helping businesses to have rich, mobile optimised digital presence. My Business Websites will be available in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, and Malayalam.
Google also got on stage small businesses that have been using its products. Walnut, Go Co-op and Maganlal Dresswalla were in conversation with Sundar Pichai and shared their journey to digital using Google offerings including Google My Business, Google AdWords and Google Cloud Platform. The company also announced the Primer app, available on Android and iOS, it will teach digital marketing skills in an interactive way.
The announcements clearly mean that Google wants a share of the Indian enterprise market. Also, the announcements are in line with his mission to train two million developers on its Android platform over the years, which is in partnership with the National Skill development Corporation of India. India is an Android-dominated consumer market, but Google's participation in the enterprise market isn't as much as rivals like Microsoft and Amazon.
The past few months, we've been hearing over and over about big data, cloud and other enterprise services that will come integrated with artificial learning and machine learning, and Google now wants to ensure it is not late for the cloud party.
LinkedIn India recently put forth its three-step strategy that had a major chunk aimed at startups and SMBs. For instance, the usually unorganised small companies will be offered a premium hiring, marketing and learning solutions with its Starter Pack. The offering called 'LinkedIn a box' is now in pilot phase and being tested by 100 SMBs. Many believe that Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn has put Google under pressure.
Internet companies have now begun taking the Indian enterprise market seriously and are looking at smaller businesses as a major source of revenue. Google recently rebanded its cloud business as Cloud Region and also announced Cloud Region for India. Now, Google has significant contribution in enterprise with its certain products (email, Android offerings, search and so on), but Microsoft and Amazon clearly lead the race when it comes to cloud.
For a broader perspective, KPMG’s Impact of internet and digitisation on SMBs in India study along with Google reveals that 68% of the 51m Indian SMBs are offline. The uptake for digital by SMBs could help increase their contribution to India’s GDP by 10 percentage points, bring more people online, and Internet companies can reach out to untapped customers.
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