Google Missed Out on China. Can It Flourish in India?<br />But intense efforts to adapt Google’s products for India —<br />and invent new ones to serve Indian customers — began in earnest in 2015 after Sundar Pichai, who was born in India, became Google’s chief executive.<br />“We have to figure out how to build the right products for them,” said Caesar Sengupta, the Google vice president who oversees<br />Next Billion Users, its unit dedicated to creating products for emerging markets like India, Brazil and Indonesia.<br />Arjun Vishwanathan, associate director of emerging technologies at IDC India, said<br />that search, Google’s core expertise, was “culturally not that important to Indians.”<br />“Where Google scores is its ability to keep it simple<br />and keep it convenient while letting the consumer decide what she wants to do without being in her face,” he said.<br />It has marshaled some of its best developers, designers<br />and researchers to figure out how to adapt or completely rethink products like YouTube to serve the needs of mobile internet users with smaller budgets but big aspirations.<br />At an event on Tuesday in New Delhi, Google unveiled its most ambitious India-focused product so far<br />— a new version of its Android operating system and related apps designed for low-end smartphones.
