Sundar Pichai in India: Google to invest more, step up hiring and build new campus

New Delhi: Google will invest more in India, step up hiring, build a new campus and provide affordable Internet access to millions in a nation that is US-based firm's most important untapped market for adding users.

The firm's India-born chief executive Sunder Pichai, on his first official visit to India since taking the top job in August, announced plans to provide Internet connectivity to 100 railway stations across the country by next year.

Describing India as among its most important market, Pichai said Google will set up a new campus in Hyderabad and invest both in engineering and business development in India as well as work to increase internet access and develop products that are lighter and faster.

"We will build new campus, ramp up engineering presence in Hyderabad to make products for India; and increase hiring in Bengaluru," he said.

Pichai added that the company will power 100 railway stations across the country with WiFi by December 2016 as part of its partnership with RailTel.

"Mumbai Central (station) will go live by January," he added.

The telecom wing of the Indian Railway, RailTel, had signed an agreement with the subsidiary of Google India to provide WiFi facilities at 400 stations across the country.

"Our focus on bringing Internet access to everyone, making sure our products are working for them in a meaningful way and then ensure our platform allows them to add their voice to the Internet," the India-born CEO said.

Besides, Google will also expand its rural internet programme for women from pilot to full scale programme to cover three lakh villages in India, he said.

During his two-day visit Pichai, who grew up in Chennai, is to meet with top officials, President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to outline the ways Google is trying to connect those coming online for the first time in the country of more than 1.2 billion people.

Pichai met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and IT & Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today and is scheduled to meet Modi tomorrow.

Pichai, who is credited with building products such as Google's Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system, and is known for his keen intellect and modesty, is looking at getting more people to plug into the company's services, such as search, Gmail and YouTube.

He is also seeking to revive fortunes of Android One Phone that met a lukewarm response from the Indian market after its launch last year.

Pichai said India will overtake the US in terms of users of Android, that competes with Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows operating systems.

Google, which is the dominant search engine across major markets, said India ranks second, after the US, in terms of search volumes from mobile phones.

It already sees higher volumes of search traffic from India on mobile devices than those from desktop percents.