Google Empowers India’s AI Future with Local Gemini Rollout and Developer-Centric Innovations

National Times Bureau, July 23, 2025: In a major push to strengthen India’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, Google on Wednesday announced a series of India-focused AI and developer initiatives at its flagship Google I/O Connect India 2025 event in Bengaluru. These efforts, company officials said, aim to foster innovation, boost productivity, and support India’s vibrant technology community as it continues to build AI solutions at scale.

One of the most significant announcements was the localization of Gemini 2.5 Flash’s onshore processing capabilities, offering Indian developers improved AI performance with reduced latency. This move is expected to be a game-changer in regulated sectors like healthcare, finance, and governance, where real-time AI-powered decision-making is becoming increasingly essential.

Senior Director for India and APAC at Google DeepMind, Manish Gupta, praised Indian developers for driving global innovation. “Indian developers are literally writing the next chapter of India’s success story,” he said, adding that AI is now deeply embedded in real-world applications that are impacting millions across sectors.

Google also shared data underscoring its commitment to India’s digital economy. In 2024, its Android and Play platforms contributed ₹4 lakh crore in revenue while helping create 35 lakh jobs. To further assist developers, the company rolled out agentic AI tools and new Firebase Studio templates, making it easier to build and deploy end-to-end AI applications.

Mobile developers also received a significant boost with the global expansion of mapped locations to over 250 million, and the launch of India-specific pricing for Google Maps UI components. A new AI-powered summary feature in the Places API will help tailor hyperlocal services for Indian users, especially in the growing e-commerce and logistics markets.

In support of the government’s “Make in India” AI vision, Google is partnering with three India AI Mission startups—Sarvam, Soket AI, and Gnani—to develop indigenous AI models based on its open-source Gemma architecture. Sarvam’s latest innovation, “Sarvam-Translate”, was highlighted as a key outcome of this collaboration. Additionally, in partnership with IIT Bombay’s BharatGen initiative, Google is contributing to the advancement of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) systems in Indic languages.

Recognising India’s booming gaming market, Google launched the ‘Google Play x Unity Game Developer Training’ initiative. With support from Unity and the Game Developers Association of India (GDAI), the program will initially train 500 developers with over 30 hours of hands-on instruction across various game development roles.

The event also showcased cutting-edge innovations from Indian startups like InVideo, Sarvam, Glance, and Nykaa, who demonstrated impactful real-world solutions built using Google’s AI technologies. Google further encouraged developer participation through its Gen AI Exchange Hackathon, which invites coders to tackle real-world problems using generative AI tools.

These announcements mark a significant step in Google’s long-term strategy to localize its technologies, democratize AI development, and ensure Indian developers remain at the forefront of global digital innovation.