India is the fastest growing start up nation in world: Sundar Pichai

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday visited the Google headquarters and interacted with CEO Sundar Pichai, and Google co-founder Larry Page and former CEO Eric Schmidt.

Modi was given a tour of Google and their four critical projects and their value for Digital India, he tweeted. “But it is India that’s now undergoing its own revolution”, he said in a YouTube video. More than 20 young people are also expected to receive a new award to recognise contributions to their respective fields at the Sinda Excellence Awards – now into its 24th edition.

Googlers were “very excited” about the visit, Mr Pichai had said earlier.

The the event, Google chief Sundar Pichai also spoke about the company teaming up with the Indian Railways and emphasised on how Chrome topped the charts in India, before it became the most widely used browser across the world.

“That is the way to go in a country with one billion cell phones and use of smart phones growing at high double digit rates”.

At Googleplex, Modi also witnessed the start of a 15-hour hackathon or a marathon software coding session with some 150 Indian programmers looking to produce software and applications relevant to India for Modi’s Digital India and Skill India missions.

The 43-year-old IIT alumnus said it is not just being on line, it is about what you get online.

“Driving technology forward would really improve people’s lives in India and all around the world”, Pichai said.

Partnering with India’s largest railway network and a major fibre internet company, Google says it will connect 100 stations before the end of 2016.

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“Some of our initiatives include making our products work on low bandwidth and even offline, making the Web accessible in Indic language, providing low-cost Chromebooks in Indian schools, investing in core infrastructure and affordable smartphone with Android One”, he said.