Posted by Bengaluru: Google has unveiled a series of initiatives aimed at accelerating India’s AI leadership and supporting the country’s developer ecosystem, during Google I/O Connect India 2025, held today in Bengaluru. The announcements highlighted Google’s commitment to empowering Indian developers with cutting-edge AI tools, enhanced infrastructure, and global-scale opportunities.
Key announcements included the on-shore availability of Gemini 2.5 Flash processing in India, a new Agentic AI suite in Firebase Studio, a strategic training collaboration with gaming engine Unity for aspiring game developers, and support for Make-in-India AI models through partnerships with local startups.
Google also reported that its Google Play and Android ecosystem contributed ₹4 lakh crore to India’s app publishers and broader digital economy in 2024, while generating over 35 lakh jobs across the country.
Powering India’s AI-Driven Future
Opening the event, Dr Manish Gupta, Senior Director for India and APAC at Google DeepMind, praised the innovation coming from India’s developer community.
“Indian developers are literally 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 India and the world,” said Gupta.
“We have been inspired by their solutions, and proud that many have chosen our AI, including Gemini, Gemma and GenMedia models like Veo and Imagen, to build their innovations. As we have done today, we remain steadfast in bringing them our industry-leading, cutting-edge capabilities to accelerate their journeys, and India’s leadership in a global AI-led future,” added Gupta.
The localisation of Gemini 2.5 Flash, Google’s high-performance, generative model, marks a major step towards enhancing responsiveness and compliance in sensitive sectors such as healthcare, finance, and the public sector, where data residency and low-latency capabilities are critical.
Supporting Indigenous AI Models
Google reaffirmed its support for India AI Mission startups, partnering with Sarvam, Soket AI, and Gnani to help build next-generation, Make-in-India AI models based on Gemma, Google’s open-source AI model family.
Sarvam, one of the selected startups, recently released Sarvam-Translate, a long-form translation model powered by Gemma. Meanwhile, Google is also collaborating with BharatGen at IIT Bombay to develop Indic ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and Text-to-Speech systems to support Indian languages, particularly in underrepresented regions and public governance contexts.
Tools for Developers and App Builders
Google launched a host of new tools through Firebase Studio, its cloud-based agentic AI development environment. These include Optimised AI templates to accelerate app development, Workspace forking and integration of Firebase backend services and One-click deployment to Firebase Hosting.These updates aim to help developers build production-ready applications faster, with no upfront cost.
In addition, the expansion of AI-powered summaries in the Google Maps Places API to India, and newly reduced pricing for the Places UI Kit, are designed to help Indian developers build smarter, more affordable, location-based services with real-time generative features.
“There’s a buzz about the ‘India Opportunity’ driven by an ambitious national vision. Google is deeply committed to leveraging this unique foundation. India’s developers are shaping how the world will use AI, and we’re proud to stand with them,” said Preeti Lobana, Country Manager, Google India during the event’s opening session.
“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 startups,” added Lobana.
Boosting India’s App Economy and Gaming Sector
According to third-party estimates cited by Google, India’s Play and Android ecosystem added ₹4 lakh crore in revenue to the economy and created 35 lakh jobs in 2024 alone. Android continues to play a key role in India’s digital inclusion: 72% of surveyed users first accessed the internet via an Android device, and nearly 69% experienced AI for the first time through an app on Android.
To fuel further growth, Google announced the Google Play x Unity Game Developer Training Programme in collaboration with Unity and the Game Developer Association of India (GDAI). This free, globally-recognised certification offers over 30 hours of online training across three tracks — Developer, Artist, and Programmer. The pilot cohort includes 500 developers from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, with plans to expand access in future phases.
As part of its ongoing push for practical AI deployment, Google also announced the Gen AI Exchange Hackathon, a platform for developers to apply cutting-edge AI knowledge to real-world problem solving and innovation.
With over 1,800 developers in attendance, Google I/O Connect India 2025 served as a platform for knowledge exchange, live demos, and forward-looking discussions. The event also featured eight leading Indian startups — Sarvam, InVideo, Glance, Nykaa, Entri, ToonSutra, Dashverse, and CoRover, showcasing how they’re using Google’s AI tools to innovate across sectors.
With its growing investments in AI infrastructure, developer training, and indigenous innovation, Google has made clear that India remains central to its global AI and digital ambitions.