Google LLC today said that it’s forming a $10 billion fund to invest in India’s fast-growing digital economy.

The move was detailed by Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and other Google executives during a livestreamed virtual event. The fund, Pichai detailed, will deploy its $10 billion capital pool over the next five to seven years in the form of “equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments.”

India has emerged as a key market for U.S. tech giants in recent years. The nation had more than 500 million internet users as of late 2019 and that number is growing rapidly as local carriers such as Jio Platforms Ltd. expand their networks. Jio has raised more than $15 billion this year to support its expansion efforts, including more than $10 billion from U.S. tech firms that included Facebook Inc., Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc.

Widening internet access will also be a priority for Google’s fund. The search giant has set a goal of “enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language, whether it’s Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or any other,” Pichai wrote in a blog post accompanying the virtual event today.

Google executives shared more details during the presentation. Caesar Sengupta, vice president of Google’s Payments service and its Next Billion Users initiative, said that Google will “continue to focus on enabling more high-quality low-cost smartphones so that more people can access the internet to learn, grow and succeed” as part of its efforts.

The search giant also detailed three other core focus areas that will guide its new fund. The company will build new products “deeply relevant to India’s unique needs,” according to Pichai, as well as invest in areas such as health, education, and agriculture. The fourth priority will be helping businesses in India adopt digital tools.

For Google, India’s vast business ecosystem presents opportunities to grow its cloud services. The search giant’s Pay digital wallet launched in India eight months ago and is now used by more than 3 million local merchants to accept payments. Google is also working to expand the number of cloud data centers it operates in the country, with plans to bring a second local Google Cloud Region online next year.

The company’s top cloud rival, Amazon Web Services Inc., is expanding its infrastructure footprint in India as well. According to a February report, AWS is investing $1.6 billion in two additional data centers near Hyderabad to add more local cloud capacity. 

Image: Google