At the 10th edition of the ‘Google for India’ event, Google announced two key initiatives on Thursday. The first is a partnership with Muthoot Finance to offer gold-backed loans through GPay, and the second is the launch of its AI assistant, Gemini Live, in Hindi starting from October 3, 2024. Google India MD Roma Datta Chobey highlighted that 11% of the world’s gold is stored in India, and this new credit option offers affordable loans with flexible usage. Additionally, Gemini Live, which already sees significant voice interaction, will soon support Hindi and, later, eight more Indian languages.
“Gemini Live is rolling out in Hindi now, with support for Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, and Urdu coming in the following weeks,” Chobey said. AI overview, a Gen-AI feature in Google Search, will also be available in Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil in the upcoming weeks.
Future Plans
Celebrating 20 years of Google in India, the company outlined future plans to integrate Beckn-enabled open networks with its AI model, Gemini, through an ‘open-source Gemini Agent Framework’. This framework will be available to all Indian businesses and users, helping them search for and discover listings—from electronics to agricultural products—as well as job opportunities and educational courses.
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Users will be able to carry out transactions seamlessly across critical sectors like agriculture and skill development via a single interface that supports voice commands in multiple languages. Additionally, Google plans to launch ‘Gemini Flash 1.5’ in India, one of the first global launches, in the next couple of months. This upgrade will enable organisations to securely implement cloud and AI solutions, allowing them to store data and perform machine learning processing entirely within India.
Google Safety Engineering Center
Google also announced plans to launch the Google Safety Engineering Center in India in 2025. Moreover, the tech giant has signed two long-term partnerships aimed at boosting clean energy generation in the country. These collaborations are expected to contribute 186 MW of new renewable energy capacity to the Indian grid by 2026.