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At Google I/O Connect India 2025, Google announced new initiatives and AI capabilities to support the Indian developer and start-up ecosystem in the country. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Google on Wednesday (July 23, 2025) said, based on third-party evaluations, the Google Play and Android ecosystem generated ₹4 lakh crore in revenue for app publishers and the wider economy in India in 2024, and supported the creation of 35 lakh direct, indirect, and spillover jobs in the country.
According to Google, the Indian ecosystem comprises the second largest number of active developers on Google Play across the world, contributing over 10 lakh developer jobs in 2024. Building compelling offerings on Android, this ecosystem has played an important role in shaping the impact and inclusiveness of India’s digital economy.
Approximately 72% of surveyed Indian users claimed their first access to the internet was on an Android device; some 85% say their Android phone is one of the main ways they access digital public services, and 69% report first using AI through an app on their Android device. Device makers have also been able to make devices affordable due to the open-source nature of Android, which has assisted in estimated savings of ₹25,200 crore in development and operating costs.
At Google I/O Connect India 2025, an annual developer conference held in Bengaluru, Google announced new initiatives and AI capabilities to support the Indian developer and start-up ecosystem in the country. These included localising data processing of its high-performance thinking model Gemini 2.5 Flash, new Agentic AI tools in Firebase Studio, a new training programme with one of the world’s leading gaming engine platforms – Unity, and collaborations with 3 India AI Mission start-ups in building innovative solutions toward the development of India’s Make-in-India AI models.
Dr. Manish Gupta, Senior Director for India and APAC at Google DeepMind, who opened the event, said, “Indian developers are writing the next chapter of India’s success story, using AI capabilities to build real-world applications that are reaching millions of businesses and people across the country and the world.”
Preeti Lobana, Country Manager, Google India, who held a fireside chat with Subrata Mitra, Partner, Accel, on building enduring AI-driven companies during the event’s opening keynote, said, “India’s developers are shaping how the world will use AI, and we’re proud to stand with them. We’re giving India the best tools, the most open platforms, and the strongest support to build boldly for the world, fostering a profound ‘AI Productivity Leap’ across businesses and start-ups.”
Google said it was closely partnering with BharatGen at IIT Bombay to build indigenous Indic language Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) models that would aim to make Gemma (a set of lightweight, generative artificial intelligence open models) more helpful in the Indic context, especially for historically underrepresented languages and governance applications.
Published – July 23, 2025 09:10 pm IST
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