27 ms·

Google to Invest $10B in India

422 points by jmsflknr 6y ago

sumanthvepa 6y ago
It is fairly routine for foreign companies to tout ther investments into their host countries’ economies. The headline figure is usually chosen for its marketing value rather than to fit any kind of GAAP definition.The real investment levels may not always match.
amrrs 6y ago
There's been a recent surge in American companies investing in India primarily through Reliance Jio (owned by Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government). It's been spiking since the Anti-China sentiment led Buy and Use 'Made in India' cries. Government has even asked eCom Flipkart and Amazon to display Country of Origin for each product. With all these, This investment from Google seems another strategic move by an American company to say that we're truly concerned about Indian growth. So that their development centers here or products made for India don't get flagged as American. Reference - Foxconn, Intel, Qualcomm, Facebook https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/apple-supplier-foxconn-to-invest-1-billion-in-india-sources/articleshow/76931415.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/apple-sup... https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/12/qualcomm-to-invest-97-million-in-indias-reliance-jio-platforms/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/12/qualcomm-to-invest-97-mill... https://www.cnet.com/news/after-facebook-intel-invests-into-indias-largest-telecom-jio/ https://www.cnet.com/news/after-facebook-intel-invests-into-...
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  I think this rather shows the continued weakness of India. On one hand, China and nationalism are used as a tool by the Indian government (not least while the Covid-19 situation goes pear-shaped), on the other hand they are at least as dependent on US companies, if not more. I think India should rather reflect on China's industrial strategy, including investments in infrastructure and fostering the development of national giants when India is lacking on both fronts.
  - throwaway_12351 6y ago
    bruh, dead Indian soldiers on the border isn't a "tool", have some empathy for the people who lost their loved ones. India has experience of dealing with China since 1965, your patronizing comment comes across massively condescending.
    - jdck1326 6y ago
      >your patronizing comment comes across massively condescending Not the case if you give the comment a charitable reading.
      - throwaway_12351 6y ago
        fuck your charity, and fuck yourself and the parent as well. once you lose some loved one in a military skimmish, then call them a tool.
  - chvid 6y ago
    More broadly maybe one should think of the China model as state-led capitalism and note that it did not origin in China but in Japan and succesfully carried countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore out of their development country status. It is not the same as nationalism and in particular for India, strong nationalism has the flip-side of igniting dormant conflicts with it sizeable muslim minority.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      It was accompanied by nationalism in all of those cases, however. Also don't forget the Prussians, where Japan got it from.
  - blueblisters 6y ago
    > I think India should rather reflect on China's industrial strategy, including investments in infrastructure and fostering the development of national giants when India is lacking on both fronts. I think it's much easier to make massive investments in infrastructure when you have a current account surplus. The Indian government is trying to push the industry to be more export focused but years of protectionism and import-substitution norms have made the industry less competitive.
- ritwik310 6y ago
  "data" x_x
- frequentnapper 6y ago
  I don't see how it's not alarming for Indians that one key person/company connected to the govt is the sole beneficiary of incoming businesses into India.
  - pankajdoharey 6y ago
    Well there are a lot of people who are not aware of the fact and then there are those who are onboard because they are onboard with the government. So the alarmist kind are a minority which media doesn't show. Also 90% of the media channels are owned by the aforementioned person.
    - kburman 6y ago
      Man you're commenting full on since yesterday about Indian government. Is there something that bothered you a lot?
      - yati 6y ago
        Why does speaking up about the Indian government inevitably bring up questions like this? Ambani's relationship with this government bothers me a lot (among many other things about any government, particularly this one).
        newyankee 6y ago
        Sonia Gandhi literally flies in Reliance jets for her Western sojourns but you are only flagging the existing Govt. dishonestly.
        yati 6y ago
        Sorry, I cannot exhaustively list all possible issues with the country's politicians everytime I have something to say about the current government that is supposed to be accountable to Indians (because they are in power, Sonia Gandhi is not!). Again, I've seen this pattern: Question this government and immediately be branded as a Congress/AAP/$party sympathizer. At best people ask questions like yours, and at worst they come to an agreement that you should immediately leave India and go to Pakistan. This for questioning your government.
- signal11 6y ago
  To say Mr Ambani has good relations with the current government is underselling his influence. He has good relationships across the spectrum of Indian political parties (except maybe the communists who are effectively irrelevant). However you feel about how Jio got its foothold in the telecoms game ([1] has details), it’s sheer scale makes it an attractive investment. It’s one of two major national 4G networks and an astonishing amount of data moves through it. They’ve big ambitions on the 5G front. They’re also building India’s largest last-mile fibre network. Given that Ambani wants Jio to be debt-free by next year, and an upcoming IPO for Jio by 2024, key industry players falling over themselves to grab a pre-IPO piece isn’t surprising. The concern, of course, is the complete lack of privacy legislation in India, and how this impacts Jio’s ambitions re “monetising” its users and their clickstream activity. [1] https://m.thewire.in/article/tech/reliance-jio-telecom-regulation-trai-anil-ambani https://m.thewire.in/article/tech/reliance-jio-telecom-regul...
- base698 6y ago
  Also, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/us-india-trade/554321/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/us... https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/india-us-sign-3-billion-deal-for-purchase-of-15-chinook-heavylift-and-22-apache-attack-helicopters/amp_articleshow/49142634.cms https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/india-us-sign-3-bil... https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/oil-gas/us-deadline-ends-india-stops-purchasing-iranian-oil/amp_articleshow/69475495.cms https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/oil-gas/us-deadl...
- screye 6y ago
  > Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government To be fair, Mukesh has got good connections everywhere. He is India's most powerful person. Amitabh and the Shahrukh (some of the world's richest actors, both half billionaires) both volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding as a show of appreciation. If a man can command the most powerful of his country to such level of willful subservience, then every Govt. will try to curry favor with him. I will add, that while his intentions might be entirely selfish, the pace at which Jio was able to bring affordable 4G to the whole country is incredibly empowering for rural / small town India. That being said, adding money to the pool of what is quickly becoming a monopoly is not a "fund to digitize America" as Pichai put it.
  - derefr 6y ago
    > volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding ... subservience I don't know about you, but when I hear "working as a server at a wedding attended by many powerful people", I don't think "subservience", I think "unique opportunity to make connections, and to potentially snoop insider information."
    - viklove 6y ago
      You must not know of Amitabh and the Shahrukh -- they're not some smalltime actors that need to get a leg up. This would be like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt offering to be servers at Jeff Bezos' daughters wedding. It's absurdly subservient.
      - mycodebreaks 6y ago
        Do not ignore cultural differences. If you see such an activity as a job, then you would arrive at a conclusion like yours. In India, it's common for hosts to serve food as a sign of respect to their guests. Close friends and family of hosts also join. This only showed the closeness of the relationships among Mukesh and other stars. Seeing it as a subservient act isn't accurate, no big star would sign up if it were so.
        6y ago
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  On the topic of country of origin, they list the country of origin on all produce I've purchased here in the UK. It blows my mind that it is profitable to ship grapes to the UK from South Africa.
- Sangama34 6y ago
  India's potential is limited only by the incompetence of Indian government (irrespective of who is in power). Too many shady powers being involved here pulling the string. India's data localization law was in fact lobbied for by the real estate firms as they wanted foreign companies to be arm twisted into investing in real estate in India. You can search news for who benefits from this sort of wasteful expenditure.
  - naruvimama 6y ago
    Given its huge population which is a growing market, it does make sense putting data centers closer home. Cheap power and cooling might be a factor, but India is also building huge solar and wind capacities, and not to forget the solar alliance and cross border solar energy exchange/grid.
  - sabujp 6y ago
    corruption is caused by wealth, health, educational inequality, lack of familiy planning in many cases. If people can't feed themselves or their families they will turn to corruption and use any means to get ahead
bamboozled 6y ago
Getting the feeling China has blown it and successful companies looking to expand into Asia are now looking at India instead. I also saw that Foxconn is looking to build Apple products in India now too.
- buran77 6y ago
  Companies don't invest billions in India to shaft China, they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market, which is a huge one. If India suddenly sees a wave of "build it at home" sentiment then Google or Apple won't want to be left out and fall behind the competition. Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whether it's decades of being the mole in a wack-a-mole game with the Chinese system, or having to invest extra billions in India. For example the largest manufacturing plant BMW has is in the US. But that's not because it's cheaper to build there, or because they want to shaft Germany. It's because they wanted access to that market in an economically and socially acceptable fashion, making them the biggest auto exporter by value in the U.S. The "socially acceptable" may not have worked since even the White House was unaware of this, presumably many Americans also.
  - bamboozled 6y ago
    No, but they need to make logical decisions about which market to invest in, and it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? If I was making that decision, it would be clearly easier to do business in India rather than China and likely far more lucrative with less concerns about property theft, censorship and the stain that human rights abuses will leave. I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in China, it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often.
    - buran77 6y ago
      > it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? It doesn't look like this to me. India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. Even if the GDP per capita (nominal or PPP) is about half of that of China, it still has a huge potential as a market and it never received enough attention. Companies are starting to see that potential now. We shouldn't anthropomorphize company decisions, they are generally purely pragmatic. There were money on the table, it doesn't imply India will be the biggest or most profitable market or production center. While domestic consumption in big markets that demand local production will be satisfied as such (so an Indian iPhone might say "Made in India"), companies will still supply other markets with products coming from the factory that allows them the highest profits (so a US or EU iPhone will likely still say "Made in China"). > it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often. Designing and building an iPhone are also not very straight forward but if it's profitable companies will do it. That's why so many companies still operate in China despite the chicanery.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mango_indian 6y ago
Any idea on the split, what is 10 billion going to, devlopers? Apps? Infra?, What vague shit is this ecosystem..
- sbmthakur 6y ago
  The entire amount is not being invested in one go. It will be invested in the next 5-7 years. They probably don't have the department wise breakup at the moment.
  - ashishkoujalgi 6y ago
    I would have guessed they do have a strategic raodmap laid out which involves estimations on each of the spendings. It is just not public yet or wont be in the coming months at least because the long-term strategies are designed to be subjected to change. The actual investment scales may never be released to public and one can only make assumptions based on a chnages in the ecosystem of Indian infrastructures.
kaushikt 6y ago
First Facebook invests $6bn in India with Jio and now Google. There is a lot of potential in the growing Indian consumer base. - 2nd most populated country on the internet - english speaking is wide spread - adoption towards 'an app for everything' has grown substantially in the past decade. So far, I think Google has invested in FreshWorks and Dunzo. I don't think there was a lot of active participation so far, this might change now.
kjaftaedi 6y ago
Google has been funneling around 20 billion dollars yearly through Bermuda to evade taxes using the infamous 'irish double sandwich'. Pressure from the US and EU is finally forcing Ireland to change their laws. Google is in a situation when they have money that they need to figure out a plan for since they can't do as much tax evasion as they previously were permitted to. https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/01/02/google-to-end-bermuda-tax-scheme/ https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/01/02/google-to-end-bermu...
- flippedbit 6y ago
  Tax minimization is a form of tax avoidance rather than tax evasion (Not saying it’s good, rather just that google weren’t breaking any laws).
  - TLightful 6y ago
    "My dear wife, please believe me ... we weren't having a sexual affair, I was just getting a BJ"
    - onetimemanytime 6y ago
      If you want the case that you chose to be similar to Google's tax maneuvers, that specific sexual act then would not forbidden in the contract. If what Goog is doing was forbidden, Google would be sued by DOJ in a heartbeat.
      - poiuytrewqa 6y ago
        It was doing something forbidden and they were charged for it https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/technology/google-italy-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/technology/google-italy-t... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-tech-google-tax/google-to-pay-1-billion-in-france-to-settle-fiscal-fraud-probe-idUSKCN1VX1SM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-tech-google-tax/go...
  - poiuytrewqa 6y ago
quyleanh 6y ago
Hope India is not the second China, where they are invested and destroyed when being strong because of threatening America's position.
- throwaway_12351 6y ago
  I think it will be more like US/UK relationship. China had a good chance to be like US if they would have been politically liberal, though I don't think they would have been so well off economically since political instability is costly. India's governance is a derivative of UK, so most likely just like UK with a 20 times bigger market.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  The US will act against any threats to their position. Although India has the potential to be a threat, so far it hasn't been and the more the US can invest in India and 'own' large swathes of key industries the better for the US but someday India may wake up to the fact that their economy is, or can be, larger than the US's and start acting accordingly.
  - mcny 6y ago
    China PR makes me question a lot of things. For example, I’ve always been told that protectionism doesn’t work but with the great firewall it seems to work just fine in China PR. How do I explain it?
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      Protectionism works when you're weak and try to develop your own industry (all East Asian countries followed that path). Protectionism hinders you if you're strong and try to penetrate other countries' markets. Protectionism is often detrimental to consumers. Nothing is black and white.
      - zozbot234 6y ago
        East Asian development was not based on protectionism, it was based on providing goods/services for export (even when "weak") which requires openness to competition on a global scale. Protectionism was tried in Latin America and even in India prior to the 1980s and 1990s, and it has consistently been a failure.
ilaksh 6y ago
I wonder if this is a response to the recent $1 billion Foxconn investment.
actuator 6y ago
Seems like a headline grabbing thing in the current geopolitical context. They are stating $10B in the next 5-7 years. Quite sure a company like Google would have a spend like that earmarked from way before in one of the big emerging markets like India. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google all have been working towards this for a while now.
- totalZero 6y ago
  Agreed. For context, Google spent $8.5B buying back its own stock in the first quarter of 2020. They could invest $10B immediately, if they so desired.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Yeah, for a country this large 10B is snall potatoes
- onetimemanytime 6y ago
  India is probably China of xx years ago, with a lot more protections. I understand that India is no perfect democracy and corruption exists, but it still wants to act as a democracy.
  - bhaskara2 6y ago
    India is more democratic than even USA. Case in point Arvind Kejriwal and multiple such leaders. Anyone can form a party and contest the elections and actually have a fighting chance to govern India, can the same be said about the USA?
    - vinay427 6y ago
      Maybe there is a case to be made here, and maybe you can make a convincing one given more time. However, as it stands there's a world of difference between the rise to (local) power of someone like Kejriwal and the claim that India is more democratic than the US. That is a rather specific feature that, even if true, is neither sufficient nor required to be democratic.
thecleaner 6y ago
This is just a PR announcement with no specific timeline or even a plan.
OJFord 6y ago
How do I read a Techcrunch article without going through guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers first? Here's the Times of India, anyway: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/google-to-invest-10-billion-in-india-will-use-money-to-up-digital-stake/articleshow/76937268.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/google-to...
- encom 6y ago
  My DNS-level ad blocking trips on TC articles as well, so your solution of using some other site, that doesn't hate its users is the correct one. IMHO, such garbage should be filtered from HN.
- aembleton 6y ago
  > How do I read a Techcrunch article without going through guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers first? Use Outline: https://outline.com/zWtBay https://outline.com/zWtBay
m0zg 6y ago
Is there even a way for Google to invest in a high-corruption country like India without paying bribes (which would break US anti-bribery laws)? I'm pretty sure such an investment would be impossible in e.g. Russia, where many a hand needs to be greased before anything can happen.
- nodelessness 6y ago
  They've been doing business in a high corruption country for over 20 years so I think they will manage.
- sbmthakur 6y ago
  Which departments Google would need to bribe to get their work done?
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Probably all of them. The guy has a valid point, in Russia you can't even run a canteen or a pub without having to pay off food/health and fire safety authority - they can shut you down based on imaginary violations. Now imagine what happens when tax authorities, immigration / visas and foreign investment is involved.
- neurostimulant 6y ago
  Google probably didn't do any bribing directly, but their local consultants might do it to make sure the project going smooth and will simply invoice the "lobbying" expense to Google later. At least that's how it goes in my country.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Yes. In fact I suspect they haven't paid bribes because the US will arrest their CEO if they pay bribes. There are complex reasons exceptions, but in general us companies don't pay bribes unless someone's life is directly threatened. The same goes for UK companies, and I have no doubt all the other major countries in Europe have similar laws. One of my companies competors get caught bribing. After investigation it was determined the company doesn't pay bribes and so this was a bad employee. The fines otherwise would have shut them down. This was used to justify sending me to anti bribery classes even though I don't do the type of work where I'm likely to have opportunities to bribe someone (or so I think?). I wasn't told who it was though.
LatteLazy 6y ago
It's hard to know what's going on here. Will it actually be 10bn? Only time will tell... Doing what (sales, dev, support, research)? Is this new productive activity or just outsourcing? Why? Is this hedging the risks of China sanctions/user rejection? or the risks of Indian nationalism? or honestly wanting a more local input on the Indian market/economy? or a moral decision given China going from bad to worse? Is it just outsourcing to a low cost country? A mix of all these? Reading the faff, it sounds like they're selling this in a similar way to Google fibre: we'll invest to inspire/shame others into doing their job and also to create a market by showing people what is available. Interestingly I imagine 10bn USD goes a long long way in India. So this could be a huge boon for some local areas of India, so that's nice.
- iamgopal 6y ago
  My Guess is datacenter, as it is quite long time since Indian gov want google,fb etc to have local data local.
zolosa 6y ago
The $10B would be invested in a period of 5-7 years. With lot of tech investment coming in I guess there is bound to be tech explosion in Indian IT
noisy_boy 6y ago
If Google has agreed to store user data locally/share it with the government in exchange for favourable policies/government turning a blind eye to its monopolistic position, its a very cheap price for what would be basically a win-win deal for both parties. The product i.e. extremely price-sensitive average Indian voter/consumer doesn't care much about privacy anyway.
zigzagzog 6y ago
CEO is Indian, so makes sense.
sunseb 6y ago
Why not invest in the US and the black community?
- throwawaybab323 6y ago
  why pay more for something they can pay a 1/16th to?
- altgoogler 6y ago
  (Disclaimer - am Googler; these opinions are my own) It's not an either or decision. One can do both. https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/commitments-racial-equity/ https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/comm...
  - throwawaybab323 6y ago
    lol what this is just 175 million dollar charity donation its not a 10b+ project to guarantee jobs to blacks.
- scared2 6y ago
  Because the CEO is Indian.
- bzb3 6y ago
  There actually are serious problems in India that aren't self inflicted.
- 236dev 6y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I feel the same way about h1b visas. I wish instead of importing cheap labor we spent extra money and trained people in the African American community that don't have as many opportunities.
  - WBWBWB1010s 6y ago
    - How much did america gain from colonial behavior done in India. Remember capital flows, India --> Colonial UK --> 13 Colonies -> Infrastructure Not saying your wrong, but your point just comes to "who got screwed over more" it's not productive to have that debate, because you might ask well Fly Down To the Worst Third World Countries who were hurt most by America, or prior colonialist
zwaps 6y ago
Off Topic: That website has no obvious opt-out option for EU users, just some dark pattern pop-up that also breaks the browser's "back" functionality. If anyone here works at techcrunch, please feel adequately ashamed about this. Thanks.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  "Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mk000v 6y ago
OMG! Its True?
LoSboccacc 6y ago
> Investments will focus on four areas suddenly, dozens upon dozens of artificial intelligence startup that aims at better health trough translating nutritional information of produce into all the relevant languages and teach deep-learning improved version of traditional dishes to meet growing population need using local scooter forces to deliver fresh produce daily at people offices
linuxftw 6y ago
More corporate imperialism. This will only further the wealth gap between domestic companies and companies owned/backed by google. Is there an Indian-owned search engine? Displaced. Indian-owned news aggregator? Displaced. Nothing more than the modern day process of creating a banana republic. Rich foreigners with massive amounts of capital can dominate the local business climate, strong lobbying will cement their dominance, and local businesses will have no chance to thrive.
- itronitron 6y ago
  whereas in the US it's just rich citizens with massive amounts of capital dominating the local business climate
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    Cheap overseas labor subsidizes the rich here. The political class has crushed small business by allowing large corporations to outsource their pollution and side-step labor and safety laws. If you want giant international corporations to run the world, this is the way.
motteboss 6y ago
I think the perspective to think is Google is investing despite perceived ‘protectionism’.
MangoCoffee 6y ago
China is aging. China population https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/ vs India population https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2020/ China will never develop a consumption based economy with its aging population. It takes Europe, decades for its population to age. It only take Japan 25 years to age like Europe and China's one child policy is not helping and its on track to age like Japan. It's only a logical decision to go to India for its young population and most Indian speak English. If only India is more friendly to foreign business and can do what CCP did. (central planning) I think India can surpass China to became number two largest economy.
- btian 6y ago
  > China will never develop a consumption based economy with its aging population Why is that the case? I assume older people consume more than younger ones, esp healthcare
  - MangoCoffee 6y ago
    30-40 is the high of consumption. marriage/kids mean house, car...etc. you start to pull back after 60 and try to save your money to last you into old age. health care along is not going to drive the consumption based economy like when you are in your 30. you can see that in baby boomers. Gen X never carry United States like baby boomers did and Gen Y will carry America for the next few decades.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      Can confirm - 3 kids and I've never bought so much shit in my life. I should replace my front door with a conveyor belt for all the Amazon boxes... I laughed at that TED talk where the guy shows how shaking your hands can save a paper towel. We have used more paper towels in the last 1 month than I ever used in my entire 20 years of single adulthood combined.
- dirtyid 6y ago
  Demographics are a curse for India like it is for China due to their sheer scale. The reason why China has trouble transitioning into consumption economy is because after 30 years of incredible growth, 600M people still subsist on poverty level income. Why? Because at it's peak, manufacturing "only" employed about 1/3 of the country since 1/3 essentially maxed global demand. This is despite massively exploiting the model that made Japan, South Korea, Taiwan rich, and basically surpassing these countries in pretty much every industry except semiconductors. Populous countries has to do proportionally more to to meet it's peoples needs. Sometimes seemingly impossibly more^. The next 20-30 years is going to be India's peak demographic dividend phase assuming population stabilizes. While there's going to many positive developments, much of it will be squandered simply because India will take ~30 years of incremental growth to get to where China is today, unless it can execute central planning better than the CCP. Otherwise they're left with a bunch of discontent and destructive youth which is much more dangerous than China's curse of unproductive elderly. Growth will also be undermined by automation, which has eliminated entire high employment manufacturing opportunities, while increase in industrial robots is helping existing manufacturing countries retain their base, i.e. China is installing 150k industrial robots per year (3x more than 2nd place) and rapidly climbing the robots per 10k employee metric (Korean leads with 700, China 100, India 5). Further China has massive influence on where manufacturing logistics, they are in a position to pick winners and losers if they ever want to weaponize export controls. And western companies will think twice about repeating practices that allowed China to grew that big in the first place. Development is going to be spread across South Asia, ASEAN, India will not be in a place to capture as much of the pies as China did. I do think it's about time India shapes up and make an concerted effort to develop, but she has accrued so many nerfs for simply waiting too long. It's overdue, but in many ways it's already too late. ^Keep in mind development, especially for a massive potential powers like India is much more involved. There's a reason US pivoted to undermine China after Made in China 2025 was announced. These are industries essential to self-sufficiency AND climbing out of middle income trap, but simultaneously erode US/Western lead. India will face the same resistance if she ever reaches that far, otherwise all she'll ever be is farmers and widget makers. Hegemony will always cap the ambition of potential rivals. It's different for smaller countries are allowed to grow rich, often with support, because they will never be threats. It's why India & China has their own nuclear and space program. Why China expends vast resources for indigenous military. Once India grows too fast, it will be kneecapped by US and China. Like US kneecapped Japan and China. That's the way it goes.
squalo 6y ago
What promises has Google ever kept?
- mav3rick 6y ago
  Luckily for you, you can "Google" that.
tanilama 6y ago
This isn't too much of a surprise TBH. Google's business is stagnating in US/EU. They need to find a better place to grow.
olivermarks 6y ago
I suggest this is nothing less than a play to control India's core infrastructure, the first truly digital economy ala the WEF's 4th revolution. The challenge will be how monopolistic this is and how democratic imo https://www.ft.com/content/431e50fb-eedc-44f7-9c36-d85dd9cc2f32 https://www.ft.com/content/431e50fb-eedc-44f7-9c36-d85dd9cc2... 'Google said its “India Digitization Fund” would be spread over five to seven years, focusing on affordable internet access, new product development tailored to Indian market needs and accelerating digital transformation, as well as healthcare, education and agriculture. India, with its 1.3bn population, represents one of the biggest opportunities for tech companies globally after hundreds of millions of Indians started using smartphones and accessing the internet in recent years. Google Pay, the company’s digital payments service, has grown rapidly since launching in the country in 2017'.
ajiteshleo 6y ago
It seems to be part of some massive PR campaign. Yesterday, there was similar news about Google's investment in Italy - https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1281128295392661504 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1281128295392661504
scared2 6y ago
> Why not invest in the US and the black community? Because the CEO is Indian.
kanox 6y ago
Comments on this post are more toxic than expected.
jaspergilley 6y ago
The Google Belt and Road Initiative
Fiveplus 6y ago
What an exceptional dumpster fire of a thread. Very very sub-standard by HackerNews standards. I'm dissapointed in the lack of moderation in this one.
achow 6y ago
Nature of these investments seems to be somewhat different. These investment are more towards infrastructure, rural skilling, education etc. There were couple of ministers who were part of the announcement (unlike other corporate investment announcement like that of recent FB one, where govt officials would never make an appearance); one of the ministers even extorted Google to adopt cluster of villages and make them 'Digital' ones. https://youtu.be/GwJJw2fE8T4?t=1625 https://youtu.be/GwJJw2fE8T4?t=1625 This $10 Billion (!) investment is not in the same league as that of FB, Intel, Saudi investment in Reliance Jio.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cryptica 6y ago
Maybe I should move to India. I heard so many success stories from there. I think Australia, Europe and US are on the decline. In Australia and Europe, raising in $20K+ of investment is basically impossible no matter how good you are or how much traction your product has... and you have to compete with well funded startups from other countries.
sizzle 6y ago
Between Apple and Google heavily investing in Indian facilities , I wonder if this is going to actually lead to physically outsourcing our jobs for real
- ipnon 6y ago
  What is different about this situation than previous situations? The history of claiming high tech software engineering will soon outsource itself to India is long.
  - sizzle 6y ago
    The opportunity to be first to market to establish custom hardware fabs and house H1-b talent in new headquarters blocked by current political leadership from immigrating here from India and opportunity to wrestle away control from Shenzhen and China and establish and control their own supply chain.
sizzle 6y ago
Between Apple and Google investing heavily in facilities in India, I wonder if this is the writing on the wall that is the start of building up outsourced H1-b teams in economical state-of-the-art headquarters while they transition down their real estate footprint in the Bay Area in the wake of the 'new normal' way of remote working due to Covid-19. Any predictions for the next 10 years if this will be a threat to on-shore devs considering the braindrain occurring at the direction of our president's myopic leadership and executive orders?
- kccqzy 6y ago
  I don't understand. If they decide to hire more in India they won't need H-1Bs any more. Also, presidential cycles are short. A four-year presidency is simply not long enough to cause massive brain drain to be a threat for anything. But if the next administration continues to be myopic, I can see that trickle of brain drain turn into a torrent.
  - sizzle 6y ago
    "I don't understand. If they decide to hire more in India they won't need H-1Bs any more." That's exactly the point I was trying to make, that the former H-1B individuals will be hired to work at these new facilities in their homeland instead of bringing them to the bay area, as they no longer have physical working spaces here due to Covid-19 office closures and remote WFH for the foreseeable future. Tech companies can then divest their expensive bay area real estate and shrink their HQ footprints to be a more global workforce and at the same time establish themselves in India and create custom hardware fabs away from Shenzhen and China, with lower cost savings of labor in India. This will lower their H-1B hiring and talent acquisition costs drastically and the best and most talented H-1B's can instead work from the comfort of their home countries (e.g. India). Thoughts?
    - smenyp 6y ago
      But "this will increase salaries by reducing supply" is the common narrative on HN that one cannot fight. Reasoning bottoms-up, you are right. This will reduce Bay Area footprint, and will allow good talent to join at lower costs. Couple this with top Indian talent in US not being treated fairly (most Indian immigrants have to wait 4-5 decades before being eligible for a green card even at Google / FB / etc..). The future for the Bay Area may not be as bright as the last 15 years. I certainly hope this isn't the case since I have a vested interest in the Bay Area but I do think longer term this is going to be the outcome though.. :( Reasoning ground-up is not the faint of hear though. Most people want to extrapolate the world from the recent past based on their personal self-serving biases.
amai 6y ago
China is not a democracy anymore.
- kanox 6y ago
  ????? China has never been a democracy.
  - amai 6y ago
    Of course not. But a lot of people thought it might become one, if they just investing heavily in it and spur a lot of economic growth. But the idea that with more economic growth you generate a democratic change is just wrong. If that would be the case Saudi-Arabia would be the most democratic country in the world. The opposite is the case. Economic growth just stabilises a regime. So the hope that China will ever become a democracy died in the last years. It is better to invest in countries which are already democratic like India.
bawana 6y ago
It seems this is how big tech is responding to the VISA lockdown by Trump and co. They will simply leave. They already moved a lot of capital abroad to avoid US taxes. Instead of bringing Indians here, they will go there. The fundamental problem is that large multinationals are playing governments off against each other. Trying to get bigger concessions for the promise of jobs. Ultimately, the working people will suffer the burden of externalities dumped on their communities (pollution, overcrowding, crime, shortages,etc) The multinationals will harvest profits while the local governments are made to look ineffective, corrupt, and inefficient because of these problems.
vkaku 6y ago
I have mixed feelings about this one, having seen their Capital G investment portfolios before. Let's hope they actually make an impact with this one. Now let's begin with an analysis: This is the only company in their portfolio doing anything very relevant to helping India: https://ayefin.com/our-products/ https://ayefin.com/our-products/ The rest are profitable companies - but not like helping Indian economies or anything serving a very large amount of people. It's a micro finance model, very helpful to India (helping businessmen and farmers avoid some terrible loan sharks), however it's a business, not a charity. Now let's talk motivations. FB recently invested in Jio, and I'm quite sure this was their most successful investment, after the 'Free Basics' idea fell through and all people protested against OTT services being subsidized and the idea of net neutrality. Now, it is well known that if you control the wire, you control the internet. You control the relevance of a website, it's advertising potential and finally, it's net revenue. FB may have gotten some sweet insider deal from Jio, so Google may now be running helter-skelter to not become the loser in the big picture. Unless Sundar Pitchai got a boost of Indian patriotism and decided to help India, like shown in some recent movies (highly doubt it). I mean, if they had already done something to boost small startups and create value for India, they had a 12+ year lead, lots of people - and they could have done something. But they did not. Maybe now they'll try to join forces with some telco (Airtel/Vodafone) or something, who knows. I doubt that kind of money will ever help regular Indians become better or enhance their quality of life. Unless they turned a new leaf, let's hope so. End Rant
known 6y ago
With $10 billion investment you can claim Delhi throne; Just saying...
curation 6y ago
The entities that control the biosphere no longer need the Western world to survive.

422 points by jmsflknr 6y ago

It is fairly routine for foreign companies to tout ther investments into their host countries’ economies. The headline figure is usually chosen for its marketing value rather than to fit any kind of GAAP definition.The real investment levels may not always match.

amrrs 6y ago

There's been a recent surge in American companies investing in India primarily through Reliance Jio (owned by Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government). It's been spiking since the Anti-China sentiment led Buy and Use 'Made in India' cries. Government has even asked eCom Flipkart and Amazon to display Country of Origin for each product. With all these, This investment from Google seems another strategic move by an American company to say that we're truly concerned about Indian growth. So that their development centers here or products made for India don't get flagged as American. Reference - Foxconn, Intel, Qualcomm, Facebook https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/apple-supplier-foxconn-to-invest-1-billion-in-india-sources/articleshow/76931415.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/hardware/apple-sup... https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/12/qualcomm-to-invest-97-million-in-indias-reliance-jio-platforms/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/12/qualcomm-to-invest-97-mill... https://www.cnet.com/news/after-facebook-intel-invests-into-indias-largest-telecom-jio/ https://www.cnet.com/news/after-facebook-intel-invests-into-...

mytailorisrich 6y ago
I think this rather shows the continued weakness of India. On one hand, China and nationalism are used as a tool by the Indian government (not least while the Covid-19 situation goes pear-shaped), on the other hand they are at least as dependent on US companies, if not more. I think India should rather reflect on China's industrial strategy, including investments in infrastructure and fostering the development of national giants when India is lacking on both fronts.
- throwaway_12351 6y ago
  bruh, dead Indian soldiers on the border isn't a "tool", have some empathy for the people who lost their loved ones. India has experience of dealing with China since 1965, your patronizing comment comes across massively condescending.
  - jdck1326 6y ago
    >your patronizing comment comes across massively condescending Not the case if you give the comment a charitable reading.
    - throwaway_12351 6y ago
      fuck your charity, and fuck yourself and the parent as well. once you lose some loved one in a military skimmish, then call them a tool.
- chvid 6y ago
  More broadly maybe one should think of the China model as state-led capitalism and note that it did not origin in China but in Japan and succesfully carried countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore out of their development country status. It is not the same as nationalism and in particular for India, strong nationalism has the flip-side of igniting dormant conflicts with it sizeable muslim minority.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    It was accompanied by nationalism in all of those cases, however. Also don't forget the Prussians, where Japan got it from.
- blueblisters 6y ago
  > I think India should rather reflect on China's industrial strategy, including investments in infrastructure and fostering the development of national giants when India is lacking on both fronts. I think it's much easier to make massive investments in infrastructure when you have a current account surplus. The Indian government is trying to push the industry to be more export focused but years of protectionism and import-substitution norms have made the industry less competitive.
ritwik310 6y ago
"data" x_x
frequentnapper 6y ago
I don't see how it's not alarming for Indians that one key person/company connected to the govt is the sole beneficiary of incoming businesses into India.
- pankajdoharey 6y ago
  Well there are a lot of people who are not aware of the fact and then there are those who are onboard because they are onboard with the government. So the alarmist kind are a minority which media doesn't show. Also 90% of the media channels are owned by the aforementioned person.
  - kburman 6y ago
    Man you're commenting full on since yesterday about Indian government. Is there something that bothered you a lot?
    - yati 6y ago
      Why does speaking up about the Indian government inevitably bring up questions like this? Ambani's relationship with this government bothers me a lot (among many other things about any government, particularly this one).
      - newyankee 6y ago
        Sonia Gandhi literally flies in Reliance jets for her Western sojourns but you are only flagging the existing Govt. dishonestly.
        yati 6y ago
        Sorry, I cannot exhaustively list all possible issues with the country's politicians everytime I have something to say about the current government that is supposed to be accountable to Indians (because they are in power, Sonia Gandhi is not!). Again, I've seen this pattern: Question this government and immediately be branded as a Congress/AAP/$party sympathizer. At best people ask questions like yours, and at worst they come to an agreement that you should immediately leave India and go to Pakistan. This for questioning your government.
signal11 6y ago
To say Mr Ambani has good relations with the current government is underselling his influence. He has good relationships across the spectrum of Indian political parties (except maybe the communists who are effectively irrelevant). However you feel about how Jio got its foothold in the telecoms game ([1] has details), it’s sheer scale makes it an attractive investment. It’s one of two major national 4G networks and an astonishing amount of data moves through it. They’ve big ambitions on the 5G front. They’re also building India’s largest last-mile fibre network. Given that Ambani wants Jio to be debt-free by next year, and an upcoming IPO for Jio by 2024, key industry players falling over themselves to grab a pre-IPO piece isn’t surprising. The concern, of course, is the complete lack of privacy legislation in India, and how this impacts Jio’s ambitions re “monetising” its users and their clickstream activity. [1] https://m.thewire.in/article/tech/reliance-jio-telecom-regulation-trai-anil-ambani https://m.thewire.in/article/tech/reliance-jio-telecom-regul...
base698 6y ago
Also, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/us-india-trade/554321/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/us... https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/india-us-sign-3-billion-deal-for-purchase-of-15-chinook-heavylift-and-22-apache-attack-helicopters/amp_articleshow/49142634.cms https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/india-us-sign-3-bil... https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/oil-gas/us-deadline-ends-india-stops-purchasing-iranian-oil/amp_articleshow/69475495.cms https://m.economictimes.com/industry/energy/oil-gas/us-deadl...
screye 6y ago
> Mukhesh Ambani who's got a good connect with the current ruling Government To be fair, Mukesh has got good connections everywhere. He is India's most powerful person. Amitabh and the Shahrukh (some of the world's richest actors, both half billionaires) both volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding as a show of appreciation. If a man can command the most powerful of his country to such level of willful subservience, then every Govt. will try to curry favor with him. I will add, that while his intentions might be entirely selfish, the pace at which Jio was able to bring affordable 4G to the whole country is incredibly empowering for rural / small town India. That being said, adding money to the pool of what is quickly becoming a monopoly is not a "fund to digitize America" as Pichai put it.
- derefr 6y ago
  > volunteered as servers at his daughters wedding ... subservience I don't know about you, but when I hear "working as a server at a wedding attended by many powerful people", I don't think "subservience", I think "unique opportunity to make connections, and to potentially snoop insider information."
  - viklove 6y ago
    You must not know of Amitabh and the Shahrukh -- they're not some smalltime actors that need to get a leg up. This would be like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt offering to be servers at Jeff Bezos' daughters wedding. It's absurdly subservient.
    - mycodebreaks 6y ago
      Do not ignore cultural differences. If you see such an activity as a job, then you would arrive at a conclusion like yours. In India, it's common for hosts to serve food as a sign of respect to their guests. Close friends and family of hosts also join. This only showed the closeness of the relationships among Mukesh and other stars. Seeing it as a subservient act isn't accurate, no big star would sign up if it were so.
      - 6y ago
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
On the topic of country of origin, they list the country of origin on all produce I've purchased here in the UK. It blows my mind that it is profitable to ship grapes to the UK from South Africa.
Sangama34 6y ago
India's potential is limited only by the incompetence of Indian government (irrespective of who is in power). Too many shady powers being involved here pulling the string. India's data localization law was in fact lobbied for by the real estate firms as they wanted foreign companies to be arm twisted into investing in real estate in India. You can search news for who benefits from this sort of wasteful expenditure.
- naruvimama 6y ago
  Given its huge population which is a growing market, it does make sense putting data centers closer home. Cheap power and cooling might be a factor, but India is also building huge solar and wind capacities, and not to forget the solar alliance and cross border solar energy exchange/grid.
- sabujp 6y ago
  corruption is caused by wealth, health, educational inequality, lack of familiy planning in many cases. If people can't feed themselves or their families they will turn to corruption and use any means to get ahead

bamboozled 6y ago

Getting the feeling China has blown it and successful companies looking to expand into Asia are now looking at India instead. I also saw that Foxconn is looking to build Apple products in India now too.

buran77 6y ago
Companies don't invest billions in India to shaft China, they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market, which is a huge one. If India suddenly sees a wave of "build it at home" sentiment then Google or Apple won't want to be left out and fall behind the competition. Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whether it's decades of being the mole in a wack-a-mole game with the Chinese system, or having to invest extra billions in India. For example the largest manufacturing plant BMW has is in the US. But that's not because it's cheaper to build there, or because they want to shaft Germany. It's because they wanted access to that market in an economically and socially acceptable fashion, making them the biggest auto exporter by value in the U.S. The "socially acceptable" may not have worked since even the White House was unaware of this, presumably many Americans also.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  No, but they need to make logical decisions about which market to invest in, and it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? If I was making that decision, it would be clearly easier to do business in India rather than China and likely far more lucrative with less concerns about property theft, censorship and the stain that human rights abuses will leave. I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in China, it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? It doesn't look like this to me. India's population is within 50 million of China but has double the growth rate. Even if the GDP per capita (nominal or PPP) is about half of that of China, it still has a huge potential as a market and it never received enough attention. Companies are starting to see that potential now. We shouldn't anthropomorphize company decisions, they are generally purely pragmatic. There were money on the table, it doesn't imply India will be the biggest or most profitable market or production center. While domestic consumption in big markets that demand local production will be satisfied as such (so an Indian iPhone might say "Made in India"), companies will still supply other markets with products coming from the factory that allows them the highest profits (so a US or EU iPhone will likely still say "Made in China"). > it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often. Designing and building an iPhone are also not very straight forward but if it's profitable companies will do it. That's why so many companies still operate in China despite the chicanery.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mango_indian 6y ago

Any idea on the split, what is 10 billion going to, devlopers? Apps? Infra?, What vague shit is this ecosystem..

sbmthakur 6y ago
The entire amount is not being invested in one go. It will be invested in the next 5-7 years. They probably don't have the department wise breakup at the moment.
- ashishkoujalgi 6y ago
  I would have guessed they do have a strategic raodmap laid out which involves estimations on each of the spendings. It is just not public yet or wont be in the coming months at least because the long-term strategies are designed to be subjected to change. The actual investment scales may never be released to public and one can only make assumptions based on a chnages in the ecosystem of Indian infrastructures.

kaushikt 6y ago

First Facebook invests $6bn in India with Jio and now Google. There is a lot of potential in the growing Indian consumer base. - 2nd most populated country on the internet - english speaking is wide spread - adoption towards 'an app for everything' has grown substantially in the past decade. So far, I think Google has invested in FreshWorks and Dunzo. I don't think there was a lot of active participation so far, this might change now.

kjaftaedi 6y ago

Google has been funneling around 20 billion dollars yearly through Bermuda to evade taxes using the infamous 'irish double sandwich'. Pressure from the US and EU is finally forcing Ireland to change their laws. Google is in a situation when they have money that they need to figure out a plan for since they can't do as much tax evasion as they previously were permitted to. https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/01/02/google-to-end-bermuda-tax-scheme/ https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/01/02/google-to-end-bermu...

flippedbit 6y ago
Tax minimization is a form of tax avoidance rather than tax evasion (Not saying it’s good, rather just that google weren’t breaking any laws).
- TLightful 6y ago
  "My dear wife, please believe me ... we weren't having a sexual affair, I was just getting a BJ"
  - onetimemanytime 6y ago
    If you want the case that you chose to be similar to Google's tax maneuvers, that specific sexual act then would not forbidden in the contract. If what Goog is doing was forbidden, Google would be sued by DOJ in a heartbeat.
    - poiuytrewqa 6y ago
      It was doing something forbidden and they were charged for it https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/technology/google-italy-tax.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/technology/google-italy-t... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-tech-google-tax/google-to-pay-1-billion-in-france-to-settle-fiscal-fraud-probe-idUSKCN1VX1SM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-tech-google-tax/go...
- poiuytrewqa 6y ago

quyleanh 6y ago

Hope India is not the second China, where they are invested and destroyed when being strong because of threatening America's position.

throwaway_12351 6y ago
I think it will be more like US/UK relationship. China had a good chance to be like US if they would have been politically liberal, though I don't think they would have been so well off economically since political instability is costly. India's governance is a derivative of UK, so most likely just like UK with a 20 times bigger market.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
The US will act against any threats to their position. Although India has the potential to be a threat, so far it hasn't been and the more the US can invest in India and 'own' large swathes of key industries the better for the US but someday India may wake up to the fact that their economy is, or can be, larger than the US's and start acting accordingly.
- mcny 6y ago
  China PR makes me question a lot of things. For example, I’ve always been told that protectionism doesn’t work but with the great firewall it seems to work just fine in China PR. How do I explain it?
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Protectionism works when you're weak and try to develop your own industry (all East Asian countries followed that path). Protectionism hinders you if you're strong and try to penetrate other countries' markets. Protectionism is often detrimental to consumers. Nothing is black and white.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      East Asian development was not based on protectionism, it was based on providing goods/services for export (even when "weak") which requires openness to competition on a global scale. Protectionism was tried in Latin America and even in India prior to the 1980s and 1990s, and it has consistently been a failure.

ilaksh 6y ago

I wonder if this is a response to the recent $1 billion Foxconn investment.

actuator 6y ago

Seems like a headline grabbing thing in the current geopolitical context. They are stating $10B in the next 5-7 years. Quite sure a company like Google would have a spend like that earmarked from way before in one of the big emerging markets like India. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google all have been working towards this for a while now.

totalZero 6y ago
Agreed. For context, Google spent $8.5B buying back its own stock in the first quarter of 2020. They could invest $10B immediately, if they so desired.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Yeah, for a country this large 10B is snall potatoes
onetimemanytime 6y ago
India is probably China of xx years ago, with a lot more protections. I understand that India is no perfect democracy and corruption exists, but it still wants to act as a democracy.
- bhaskara2 6y ago
  India is more democratic than even USA. Case in point Arvind Kejriwal and multiple such leaders. Anyone can form a party and contest the elections and actually have a fighting chance to govern India, can the same be said about the USA?
  - vinay427 6y ago
    Maybe there is a case to be made here, and maybe you can make a convincing one given more time. However, as it stands there's a world of difference between the rise to (local) power of someone like Kejriwal and the claim that India is more democratic than the US. That is a rather specific feature that, even if true, is neither sufficient nor required to be democratic.

thecleaner 6y ago

This is just a PR announcement with no specific timeline or even a plan.

OJFord 6y ago

How do I read a Techcrunch article without going through guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers first? Here's the Times of India, anyway: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/google-to-invest-10-billion-in-india-will-use-money-to-up-digital-stake/articleshow/76937268.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/google-to...

encom 6y ago
My DNS-level ad blocking trips on TC articles as well, so your solution of using some other site, that doesn't hate its users is the correct one. IMHO, such garbage should be filtered from HN.
aembleton 6y ago
> How do I read a Techcrunch article without going through guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers first? Use Outline: https://outline.com/zWtBay https://outline.com/zWtBay

m0zg 6y ago

Is there even a way for Google to invest in a high-corruption country like India without paying bribes (which would break US anti-bribery laws)? I'm pretty sure such an investment would be impossible in e.g. Russia, where many a hand needs to be greased before anything can happen.

nodelessness 6y ago
They've been doing business in a high corruption country for over 20 years so I think they will manage.
sbmthakur 6y ago
Which departments Google would need to bribe to get their work done?
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Probably all of them. The guy has a valid point, in Russia you can't even run a canteen or a pub without having to pay off food/health and fire safety authority - they can shut you down based on imaginary violations. Now imagine what happens when tax authorities, immigration / visas and foreign investment is involved.
neurostimulant 6y ago
Google probably didn't do any bribing directly, but their local consultants might do it to make sure the project going smooth and will simply invoice the "lobbying" expense to Google later. At least that's how it goes in my country.
bluGill 6y ago
Yes. In fact I suspect they haven't paid bribes because the US will arrest their CEO if they pay bribes. There are complex reasons exceptions, but in general us companies don't pay bribes unless someone's life is directly threatened. The same goes for UK companies, and I have no doubt all the other major countries in Europe have similar laws. One of my companies competors get caught bribing. After investigation it was determined the company doesn't pay bribes and so this was a bad employee. The fines otherwise would have shut them down. This was used to justify sending me to anti bribery classes even though I don't do the type of work where I'm likely to have opportunities to bribe someone (or so I think?). I wasn't told who it was though.

LatteLazy 6y ago

It's hard to know what's going on here. Will it actually be 10bn? Only time will tell... Doing what (sales, dev, support, research)? Is this new productive activity or just outsourcing? Why? Is this hedging the risks of China sanctions/user rejection? or the risks of Indian nationalism? or honestly wanting a more local input on the Indian market/economy? or a moral decision given China going from bad to worse? Is it just outsourcing to a low cost country? A mix of all these? Reading the faff, it sounds like they're selling this in a similar way to Google fibre: we'll invest to inspire/shame others into doing their job and also to create a market by showing people what is available. Interestingly I imagine 10bn USD goes a long long way in India. So this could be a huge boon for some local areas of India, so that's nice.

iamgopal 6y ago
My Guess is datacenter, as it is quite long time since Indian gov want google,fb etc to have local data local.

zolosa 6y ago

The $10B would be invested in a period of 5-7 years. With lot of tech investment coming in I guess there is bound to be tech explosion in Indian IT

noisy_boy 6y ago

If Google has agreed to store user data locally/share it with the government in exchange for favourable policies/government turning a blind eye to its monopolistic position, its a very cheap price for what would be basically a win-win deal for both parties. The product i.e. extremely price-sensitive average Indian voter/consumer doesn't care much about privacy anyway.

zigzagzog 6y ago

CEO is Indian, so makes sense.

sunseb 6y ago

Why not invest in the US and the black community?

throwawaybab323 6y ago
why pay more for something they can pay a 1/16th to?
altgoogler 6y ago
(Disclaimer - am Googler; these opinions are my own) It's not an either or decision. One can do both. https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/commitments-racial-equity/ https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/comm...
- throwawaybab323 6y ago
  lol what this is just 175 million dollar charity donation its not a 10b+ project to guarantee jobs to blacks.
scared2 6y ago
Because the CEO is Indian.
bzb3 6y ago
There actually are serious problems in India that aren't self inflicted.
236dev 6y ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. I feel the same way about h1b visas. I wish instead of importing cheap labor we spent extra money and trained people in the African American community that don't have as many opportunities.
- WBWBWB1010s 6y ago
  - How much did america gain from colonial behavior done in India. Remember capital flows, India --> Colonial UK --> 13 Colonies -> Infrastructure Not saying your wrong, but your point just comes to "who got screwed over more" it's not productive to have that debate, because you might ask well Fly Down To the Worst Third World Countries who were hurt most by America, or prior colonialist

zwaps 6y ago

Off Topic: That website has no obvious opt-out option for EU users, just some dark pattern pop-up that also breaks the browser's "back" functionality. If anyone here works at techcrunch, please feel adequately ashamed about this. Thanks.

crazygringo 6y ago
"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mk000v 6y ago

OMG! Its True?

LoSboccacc 6y ago

> Investments will focus on four areas suddenly, dozens upon dozens of artificial intelligence startup that aims at better health trough translating nutritional information of produce into all the relevant languages and teach deep-learning improved version of traditional dishes to meet growing population need using local scooter forces to deliver fresh produce daily at people offices

linuxftw 6y ago

More corporate imperialism. This will only further the wealth gap between domestic companies and companies owned/backed by google. Is there an Indian-owned search engine? Displaced. Indian-owned news aggregator? Displaced. Nothing more than the modern day process of creating a banana republic. Rich foreigners with massive amounts of capital can dominate the local business climate, strong lobbying will cement their dominance, and local businesses will have no chance to thrive.

itronitron 6y ago
whereas in the US it's just rich citizens with massive amounts of capital dominating the local business climate
- linuxftw 6y ago
  Cheap overseas labor subsidizes the rich here. The political class has crushed small business by allowing large corporations to outsource their pollution and side-step labor and safety laws. If you want giant international corporations to run the world, this is the way.

motteboss 6y ago

I think the perspective to think is Google is investing despite perceived ‘protectionism’.

MangoCoffee 6y ago

China is aging. China population https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2020/ vs India population https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2020/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2020/ China will never develop a consumption based economy with its aging population. It takes Europe, decades for its population to age. It only take Japan 25 years to age like Europe and China's one child policy is not helping and its on track to age like Japan. It's only a logical decision to go to India for its young population and most Indian speak English. If only India is more friendly to foreign business and can do what CCP did. (central planning) I think India can surpass China to became number two largest economy.

btian 6y ago
> China will never develop a consumption based economy with its aging population Why is that the case? I assume older people consume more than younger ones, esp healthcare
- MangoCoffee 6y ago
  30-40 is the high of consumption. marriage/kids mean house, car...etc. you start to pull back after 60 and try to save your money to last you into old age. health care along is not going to drive the consumption based economy like when you are in your 30. you can see that in baby boomers. Gen X never carry United States like baby boomers did and Gen Y will carry America for the next few decades.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Can confirm - 3 kids and I've never bought so much shit in my life. I should replace my front door with a conveyor belt for all the Amazon boxes... I laughed at that TED talk where the guy shows how shaking your hands can save a paper towel. We have used more paper towels in the last 1 month than I ever used in my entire 20 years of single adulthood combined.
dirtyid 6y ago
Demographics are a curse for India like it is for China due to their sheer scale. The reason why China has trouble transitioning into consumption economy is because after 30 years of incredible growth, 600M people still subsist on poverty level income. Why? Because at it's peak, manufacturing "only" employed about 1/3 of the country since 1/3 essentially maxed global demand. This is despite massively exploiting the model that made Japan, South Korea, Taiwan rich, and basically surpassing these countries in pretty much every industry except semiconductors. Populous countries has to do proportionally more to to meet it's peoples needs. Sometimes seemingly impossibly more^. The next 20-30 years is going to be India's peak demographic dividend phase assuming population stabilizes. While there's going to many positive developments, much of it will be squandered simply because India will take ~30 years of incremental growth to get to where China is today, unless it can execute central planning better than the CCP. Otherwise they're left with a bunch of discontent and destructive youth which is much more dangerous than China's curse of unproductive elderly. Growth will also be undermined by automation, which has eliminated entire high employment manufacturing opportunities, while increase in industrial robots is helping existing manufacturing countries retain their base, i.e. China is installing 150k industrial robots per year (3x more than 2nd place) and rapidly climbing the robots per 10k employee metric (Korean leads with 700, China 100, India 5). Further China has massive influence on where manufacturing logistics, they are in a position to pick winners and losers if they ever want to weaponize export controls. And western companies will think twice about repeating practices that allowed China to grew that big in the first place. Development is going to be spread across South Asia, ASEAN, India will not be in a place to capture as much of the pies as China did. I do think it's about time India shapes up and make an concerted effort to develop, but she has accrued so many nerfs for simply waiting too long. It's overdue, but in many ways it's already too late. ^Keep in mind development, especially for a massive potential powers like India is much more involved. There's a reason US pivoted to undermine China after Made in China 2025 was announced. These are industries essential to self-sufficiency AND climbing out of middle income trap, but simultaneously erode US/Western lead. India will face the same resistance if she ever reaches that far, otherwise all she'll ever be is farmers and widget makers. Hegemony will always cap the ambition of potential rivals. It's different for smaller countries are allowed to grow rich, often with support, because they will never be threats. It's why India & China has their own nuclear and space program. Why China expends vast resources for indigenous military. Once India grows too fast, it will be kneecapped by US and China. Like US kneecapped Japan and China. That's the way it goes.

squalo 6y ago

What promises has Google ever kept?

mav3rick 6y ago
Luckily for you, you can "Google" that.

tanilama 6y ago

This isn't too much of a surprise TBH. Google's business is stagnating in US/EU. They need to find a better place to grow.

olivermarks 6y ago

I suggest this is nothing less than a play to control India's core infrastructure, the first truly digital economy ala the WEF's 4th revolution. The challenge will be how monopolistic this is and how democratic imo https://www.ft.com/content/431e50fb-eedc-44f7-9c36-d85dd9cc2f32 https://www.ft.com/content/431e50fb-eedc-44f7-9c36-d85dd9cc2... 'Google said its “India Digitization Fund” would be spread over five to seven years, focusing on affordable internet access, new product development tailored to Indian market needs and accelerating digital transformation, as well as healthcare, education and agriculture. India, with its 1.3bn population, represents one of the biggest opportunities for tech companies globally after hundreds of millions of Indians started using smartphones and accessing the internet in recent years. Google Pay, the company’s digital payments service, has grown rapidly since launching in the country in 2017'.

ajiteshleo 6y ago

It seems to be part of some massive PR campaign. Yesterday, there was similar news about Google's investment in Italy - https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1281128295392661504 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1281128295392661504

scared2 6y ago

> Why not invest in the US and the black community? Because the CEO is Indian.

kanox 6y ago

Comments on this post are more toxic than expected.

jaspergilley 6y ago

The Google Belt and Road Initiative

Fiveplus 6y ago

What an exceptional dumpster fire of a thread. Very very sub-standard by HackerNews standards. I'm dissapointed in the lack of moderation in this one.

achow 6y ago

Nature of these investments seems to be somewhat different. These investment are more towards infrastructure, rural skilling, education etc. There were couple of ministers who were part of the announcement (unlike other corporate investment announcement like that of recent FB one, where govt officials would never make an appearance); one of the ministers even extorted Google to adopt cluster of villages and make them 'Digital' ones. https://youtu.be/GwJJw2fE8T4?t=1625 https://youtu.be/GwJJw2fE8T4?t=1625 This $10 Billion (!) investment is not in the same league as that of FB, Intel, Saudi investment in Reliance Jio.

deleted 6y ago

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cryptica 6y ago

Maybe I should move to India. I heard so many success stories from there. I think Australia, Europe and US are on the decline. In Australia and Europe, raising in $20K+ of investment is basically impossible no matter how good you are or how much traction your product has... and you have to compete with well funded startups from other countries.

sizzle 6y ago

Between Apple and Google heavily investing in Indian facilities , I wonder if this is going to actually lead to physically outsourcing our jobs for real

ipnon 6y ago
What is different about this situation than previous situations? The history of claiming high tech software engineering will soon outsource itself to India is long.
- sizzle 6y ago
  The opportunity to be first to market to establish custom hardware fabs and house H1-b talent in new headquarters blocked by current political leadership from immigrating here from India and opportunity to wrestle away control from Shenzhen and China and establish and control their own supply chain.

sizzle 6y ago

Between Apple and Google investing heavily in facilities in India, I wonder if this is the writing on the wall that is the start of building up outsourced H1-b teams in economical state-of-the-art headquarters while they transition down their real estate footprint in the Bay Area in the wake of the 'new normal' way of remote working due to Covid-19. Any predictions for the next 10 years if this will be a threat to on-shore devs considering the braindrain occurring at the direction of our president's myopic leadership and executive orders?

kccqzy 6y ago
I don't understand. If they decide to hire more in India they won't need H-1Bs any more. Also, presidential cycles are short. A four-year presidency is simply not long enough to cause massive brain drain to be a threat for anything. But if the next administration continues to be myopic, I can see that trickle of brain drain turn into a torrent.
- sizzle 6y ago
  "I don't understand. If they decide to hire more in India they won't need H-1Bs any more." That's exactly the point I was trying to make, that the former H-1B individuals will be hired to work at these new facilities in their homeland instead of bringing them to the bay area, as they no longer have physical working spaces here due to Covid-19 office closures and remote WFH for the foreseeable future. Tech companies can then divest their expensive bay area real estate and shrink their HQ footprints to be a more global workforce and at the same time establish themselves in India and create custom hardware fabs away from Shenzhen and China, with lower cost savings of labor in India. This will lower their H-1B hiring and talent acquisition costs drastically and the best and most talented H-1B's can instead work from the comfort of their home countries (e.g. India). Thoughts?
  - smenyp 6y ago
    But "this will increase salaries by reducing supply" is the common narrative on HN that one cannot fight. Reasoning bottoms-up, you are right. This will reduce Bay Area footprint, and will allow good talent to join at lower costs. Couple this with top Indian talent in US not being treated fairly (most Indian immigrants have to wait 4-5 decades before being eligible for a green card even at Google / FB / etc..). The future for the Bay Area may not be as bright as the last 15 years. I certainly hope this isn't the case since I have a vested interest in the Bay Area but I do think longer term this is going to be the outcome though.. :( Reasoning ground-up is not the faint of hear though. Most people want to extrapolate the world from the recent past based on their personal self-serving biases.

amai 6y ago

China is not a democracy anymore.

kanox 6y ago
????? China has never been a democracy.
- amai 6y ago
  Of course not. But a lot of people thought it might become one, if they just investing heavily in it and spur a lot of economic growth. But the idea that with more economic growth you generate a democratic change is just wrong. If that would be the case Saudi-Arabia would be the most democratic country in the world. The opposite is the case. Economic growth just stabilises a regime. So the hope that China will ever become a democracy died in the last years. It is better to invest in countries which are already democratic like India.

bawana 6y ago

It seems this is how big tech is responding to the VISA lockdown by Trump and co. They will simply leave. They already moved a lot of capital abroad to avoid US taxes. Instead of bringing Indians here, they will go there. The fundamental problem is that large multinationals are playing governments off against each other. Trying to get bigger concessions for the promise of jobs. Ultimately, the working people will suffer the burden of externalities dumped on their communities (pollution, overcrowding, crime, shortages,etc) The multinationals will harvest profits while the local governments are made to look ineffective, corrupt, and inefficient because of these problems.

vkaku 6y ago

I have mixed feelings about this one, having seen their Capital G investment portfolios before. Let's hope they actually make an impact with this one. Now let's begin with an analysis: This is the only company in their portfolio doing anything very relevant to helping India: https://ayefin.com/our-products/ https://ayefin.com/our-products/ The rest are profitable companies - but not like helping Indian economies or anything serving a very large amount of people. It's a micro finance model, very helpful to India (helping businessmen and farmers avoid some terrible loan sharks), however it's a business, not a charity. Now let's talk motivations. FB recently invested in Jio, and I'm quite sure this was their most successful investment, after the 'Free Basics' idea fell through and all people protested against OTT services being subsidized and the idea of net neutrality. Now, it is well known that if you control the wire, you control the internet. You control the relevance of a website, it's advertising potential and finally, it's net revenue. FB may have gotten some sweet insider deal from Jio, so Google may now be running helter-skelter to not become the loser in the big picture. Unless Sundar Pitchai got a boost of Indian patriotism and decided to help India, like shown in some recent movies (highly doubt it). I mean, if they had already done something to boost small startups and create value for India, they had a 12+ year lead, lots of people - and they could have done something. But they did not. Maybe now they'll try to join forces with some telco (Airtel/Vodafone) or something, who knows. I doubt that kind of money will ever help regular Indians become better or enhance their quality of life. Unless they turned a new leaf, let's hope so. End Rant

known 6y ago

With $10 billion investment you can claim Delhi throne; Just saying...

curation 6y ago

The entities that control the biosphere no longer need the Western world to survive.