Google Kicks off “Solve for India” program to inspire new breed of entrepreneurs and developers

by Shrutee K/DNS

Jaipur based Nishant Patni’s Hello English app has helped 95 lakh Indian natives learn english. Chennai based, Natarajan Raman, an Android developer has developed tamil app "kuzhandai nalam" or "child health" to help parents learn about the children's health issues in regional languages - the app has already been downloaded by 50,000 users. He has also worked with his wife who is a speech therapist to develop an Android app for Autistics kids to help them communicate using pictures. And in Pune, AgroStar aims to transform Agri-Business for farmers in rural India by making a wide range of products available to the farmer through a simple missed call.

These are just few examples of how new breed of entrepreneurs and developers are building solutions to solve for the real problems in India. With improved connectivity and the rapidly growing Internet user base, Internet today provides an opportunity to everyone to pursue their passion and create solutions to solve for the real problems of India.

With an objective to support and mentor more of such initiatives, Google today announced “Solve for India” program to inspire the new wave of entrepreneurs and startups in emerging cities like Pune, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kochi, Indore, Nagpur, Nashik, Madurai, Kanpur and Chennai. Through this initiative, Google aims to expand and energize the Start-up ecosystem in these 11 tier 2 cities and inspire the budding entrepreneurs to “Solve for India” and its underserved user needs.

“Solve for India” program will provide a platform for developers, entrepreneurs in tier 2 cities to hear from experts and learn about the latest Google technologies and get access to direct mentoring and support from Google. Entrepreneurs will get an opportunity to learn directly from Google engineers who will share product usage insights, how to develop mobile first solutions with strong offline and language capabilities and help them to build solutions across areas like Agri-tech, Healthcare, Transportation, Education, Sanitation and more.

Speaking about the initiative, Karthik Padmanabhan, Program Manager Lead for Google India, said, “Majority of India’s Internet users are Indian language users, and over 80% of them access the Internet from their mobile phones. But the current Indian startup ecosystem is building products for English speaking audience and caters only to 15% of the population. There are growing number of entrepreneurs in smaller Indian cities who are focusing on building solutions that caters to the real needs of India. Through this initiative we want to bring the best of Google under one program and join forces with them to help create solutions that serves the needs of a billion Indians.”

Developers and Entrepreneurs will be able to gain from a variety of Google’s program starting from Google Launchpad mentoring program which will help them to build, scale and accelerate early stage product ideas into category leaders. Sign-up for the fourth batch of Launchpad accelerator program that provides six month mentorship program covering all aspect of product design, business models, technology support to build for scale and go to market strategies along with $50,000 equity free investments. And for startups who’re looking to build scalable solutions Google will provide over $20,000 of cloud credits.

Developers can also look forward to build on their skills and learn from experts on latest in Android, Firebase, Machine learning, Cloud APIs, Progressive Web Apps and Indian Language Translation solutions.