A Google-Tata partnership? Google’s Country Manager on India plans

Google’s Country Manager and Vice President Preeti Lobana

With Google entering into major partnerships with large Indian conglomerates - Reliance, Adani and Bharti Airtel - are more such tie-ups on the anvil? Asked whether Google is exploring a partnership with the Tatas, Google’s Country Manager and Vice President Preeti Lobana told Moneycontrol's Nalin Mehta that, “Tatas, by the way, are a critical partner and customer. I can't say more because whenever we make announcements you will see and hear those announcements. But for us, we are always looking at where the scale is and where can we go next.”

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On Google’s existing large partnerships with Reliance, Adani and Bharti Airtel, she stressed how the scale of working with big companies allows Google to operate on population scale. Asked if these partnerships were a coincidence or part of a wider strategy, she said, “Think about who Google is. If you look at any of our products — Maps, Search, anything — we are about scale. Google operates at population scale in different parts of the world. So, when we think about partnerships, whether commercial or to scale our AI so it benefits consumers, enterprises and the ecosystem, the lens we bring is: are we doing it at scale that is truly useful for a country with India’s size and complexity? What we build can’t be narrow.”

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Reliance Industries Limited, through Reliance Intelligence Limited, and Google announced an expansive strategic partnership in October to accelerate the adoption of AI across India. As part of this, Google AI Pro plan is being rolled out, with the latest version of Google Gemini, to eligible Jio users free of charge for 18 months. This 18-month offer is worth ?35,100. Reliance has also partnered with Google Cloud to broaden access to its advanced AI hardware accelerators, Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), to enable more organizations to train and deploy complex AI models and to strengthen India’s national AI backbone. Adani Enterprises, through its joint venture company AdaniConneX, has a partnership with Google to develop India’s largest AI data centre campus and new green energy infrastructure in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Bharti Airtel also has a strategic partnership with Google to set up India’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub in Visakhapatnam. Airtel and Google plan to jointly establish a purpose-built data center in Visakhapatnam, as well as a state-of-the-art Cable Landing Station to host Google’s new international subsea cables.

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Emphasising why such partnerships were important for Google in India, she highlighted the scale they enable for the global tech giant. “ When you think about the three biggies as partners, they bring scale. We also have partnerships with different parts of the government, with the IITs, with the Indian Institute of Science, and with startups. The context is always: where is the future going?”

Watch full interview here