Big Tech's investments rise in India even as their power is questioned at home
Despite its large number of mobile internet users, India is still a nascent digital economy and stands to benefit from the large tech companies plans for their future growth
ShutterstockGAFA—the acronym used for ‘Big Tech’ formed of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—the world’s biggest technology companies, are pouring billions into India, seeking market dominance, even as their power over the digital economy at home is being questioned by lawmakers in America.
India, the world’s largest internet market by number of users after only China, is a beneficiary of these four companies’ plans for their future growth. With the exception of Apple, the other three companies find that China is a closed market for them.
That, after dominating their home market, America, leaves India with its 1.3 billion people and more than 600 million people using the internet on a monthly basis. India is projected to have 639 million monthly active internet users by the end of this year, according to a projection in May by the consultancy Kantar. That compares with 574 million in May.
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One Wednesday, the chief executives of the four Big Tech companies were questioned by a 15-member anti-trust panel of the US Congress—comprising both Democrats and Republicans. They were grilled on issues from whether the companies killed off younger competition or misused data to further their market dominance.
On the other hand, despite their already large presence in India, the Big Tech companies face a nascent internet economy in the Asian subcontinent. Their services are used by hundreds of millions of people, but they make little money out of it relative to their home market. That will change as the Indian economy grows over the next decade. That India has also leapfrogged into the mobile internet era and has a strong, globally admired, digital payments backbone also makes it an attractive market.
Earlier this month, Google announced it was investing $10 billion in India over the next five years or so to help accelerate the adoption of digital services in what is perhaps its most strategically important overseas market. The internet search giant has already struck a deal to invest $4.5 billion in Reliance Industries’s Jio Platforms, which includes the country’s biggest mobile service provider with over 400 million subscribers.
