Demonetisation is a bold and courageous move: Sundar Pichai

New Delhi: Google's India-born chief Sundar Pichai has described Prime Minister Narendra Modi's demonetisation move a very bold one.

In an interview to Economic Times, Pichai said that Modi government’s demonetisation exercise is a “ bold and courageous move” that could “propel the country to the forefront of digital payments.”

Aiming to give a technological edge to the small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India, Pichai yesterday announced two initiatives 'Digital Unlocked' and 'My Business Website'.

Google, along with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), has developed a training programme called 'Digital Unlocked', to empower thousands of Indian SMBs with essential digital skills that would enable them to get online and start using the power of the internet to grow their businesses.

The programme would be certified by Google, Ficci and Indian School of Business - Hyderabad. It would offer online and mobile courses to SMBs across the country.

The global search giant also started another initiative 'My Business Website'. It is a free tool, which would help make a website in 10 minutes.

There are around 51 million small and medium scale businesses in India. Google unveiled a joint research study with KPMG titled "Impact of internet and digitization on SMBs in India", which said that 68 percent of the 51 million Indian SMBs were offline.

With Agency Inputs