India has over 600M people without internet, so Google's investing $10B
"The next billion users..." What Google counts instead of sheep to fall asleep at night. They'll likely come from India, the world's 2nd most populous country (barely short of China). Roughly half of India's 1.3B people have yet to get online. Google wants in on those ~650M, so it's investing big in the world’s fastest growing internet market:
- The Google for India Digitization Fund will pour money into India's tech sector over the next 5-7 years. Expect spending on: equity investments, partnerships, and connectivity infrastructure.
- Google will invest $10B there to make the internet "affordable and useful" for all those not-yet-connected. Longish-term goal: gain ad-revenue-driving eyes in the #1 untapped digital growth market.
"I know I'm not the only one"... As geopolitical issues with China heat up, more companies are looking to India. China already bans American tech giants like Google and Facebook for censorship reasons. Now America's security concerns are intensifying (think: TikTok bans, Huawei bans). Political and trade issues, like China's crackdown on Hong Kong and its new deal with Iran, create a tense situation that companies don't feel safe investing in.
- Facebook invested almost $6B for a 10% stake in India’s biggest telecom, Jio Platforms, back in April (Intel and Qualcomm are now proud investors, too).
- Amazon invested $1B to take Indian businesses online, and is investing $5B to expand its India operations. Walmart dropped $16B on Indian ecommerce company Flipkart in 2018.
India brings less spending power, but more numbers power... Tech companies like Google value users by their revenue potential. India's gross national income per person was $2,130 in 2019, compared to almost $66K for the US. But the US has 330M people, over 90% of whom are internet users — India has 1.3B people and only ~55% are internet users. A massive untapped market makes up for spending power differences.