Google reaffirms commitment to digitally empower Small and Medium Businesses in India

CEO-Google Sundar Pichai on Wednesday reaffirmed its commitment to digitally empower India's 51 million strong small and medium business community by announcing the launch of 'Digital Unlocked', a training program to empower thousands of Indian SMBs with essential digital skills.

The program related for the SMBs in India will enable them to get online and start using the power of the internet to grow their business.

It also previewed the 'My Business Websites', an easy-to-use offering to help

businesses to have a rich, mobile optimized digital presence that will be launched later this year.

Making the announcements at an event in New Delhi, Pichai highlighted the representatives from hundreds of small and medium business from across the country on the benefits of the web and digital technology.

"The Internet is a powerful equalizer and we are motivated to bring the benefits of information and technology to as many people as possible. Building for everyone and making it available in the hands of as many people is at the heart and core of what we do. And we do this by investing in open ecosystems," said CEO-Google, Sundar Pichai.

He said that anyone can today become an entrepreneur, a developer, or a creator, but it is important that they have the right tools and skills to digitize.

"We believe it is important for us to invest in training and equipping these individuals and small businesses to accelerate their journey of growth," he added.

Setting the context for the initiative Google unveiled a joint research study with KPMG titled "Impact of internet and digitization on SMBs in India".

The study reiterates that 68 percent of the 51m Indian SMBs are offline.

With Digital Unlocked, Google is committed to ensuring that every single small business in India that wants to go digital has access to quality training.

In keeping with the varied learning needs of the millions of businesses in India, we've built this program across online, offline and mobile.

The offline training is being conducted in partnership with FICCI and over the next three years, 5,000 workshops will be held across 40 Indian cities.

Further, for India's mobile-first audience, Google also launched Primer, a free mobile app uniquely designed to teach digital marketing skills in a quick, easy and interactive way.

The app will be available for download through the Google Play and iOS app store. Primer also works offline and is currently available in English and Hindi with Tamil, Telugu and Marathi versions coming shortly.