For Sundar Pichai, who was elevated as the CEO of the internet search giant in August, this would be the first visit to India after assuming the charge.
Two of the top India-born chief executive officers (CEOs) heading large global technology companies will be visiting India later this month.
While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is on a personal trip, he is scheduled to spend a day with the start-ups at the T-hub, a start-up incubation centre in Hyderabad. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is on an official visit.
For Pichai, who was elevated as the CEO of the internet search giant in August, this would be the first visit to India after assuming the charge.
Apart from meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom he hosted at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Pichai would announce a slew of initiatives on December 16.
The measures would be primarily targeted for India, as a part of the Digital India initiative, top company sources told Business Standard.
Among others, Chennai-born Pichai would officially launch Google’s Wi-Fi initiatives for India in partnership with RailTel, a unit of Indian Railways that provides broadband services.
He is also slated to launch a slew of Google products that have been designed for India.
During Modi’s Silicon Valley visit in September this year, Google had announced free Wi-Fi services in over 400 railway stations in the country using the underlying optic fibre network of RailTel.
In the first phase, the company had said, around 100 stations would be ready by the end of 2016.
“This will rank it as the largest public Wi-Fi project in India, and among the largest in the world, by number of potential users,” Pichai had written in a blog post.
India is increasingly becoming strategic for the internet giant, owing to its growing internet user base as well as smart-phone users.
It is also setting up a large campus in Hyderabad that can accommodate around 13,000 people.
The company which operates out of a leased premise in Hyderabad, in May this year had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Telangana government for the projects that entails at investment of around Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion).
Microsoft CEO Nadella is on an personal visit for four to five days. He would visit Hyderabad to spend time with his parents.
However, on December 28, Nadella is scheduled to visit T-hub, a start-up incubation centre in Hyderabad that was launched by the state in collaboration with IIT-Hyderabad, Indian School of Business and NALSAR University of Law.
Said to be the largest technology incubator in the country, T-hub houses around 130 start-ups.
“He is coming on a personal visit to Hyderabad for four to five days. His only official programme is T-Hub visit,” said a top state government official.
