Google CEO Sundar Pichai says will invest more in India, Asia

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday said that the company will launch more regional products in Asia and was committed to making big investments in the region. He cited the success of Google's recently launched mobile wallet Tez in India. Pichai was speaking to investors and analysts at the quarterly earnings call. This is the first time India is figuring in a big way at the search giant's earnings call.
"To help millions of people, we are building products specifically designed for local markets in Asia. In India last month, we launched Tez, a mobile payments and commerce app that already has more than 7.5 million users who have made more than 30 million transactions. I'm really excited about the potential this brings for India's mostly cash-based economy," said Pichai, the India-born and educated CEO.

Google's mobile wallet Tez was launched last month and uses local financial tech nology platform UPI for enabling transactions. Tez is expected to add card support by the end of this year by integrating the technology of its global mobile payment platform Android Pay.

"We are investing more in Asia as well in addition to our go-to-market teams. We are building out great product and engineering teams.That's what has led us to improve core products like Search, Maps, YouTube, etc, to work better in those regions.So I think, overall, that's creating a good virtuous cycle and I'm looking forward to having more momentum there," Pichai said.

Pichai said there was a differentiated opportunity in emerging markets. He said that many of these markets characteristics were due to those being mobile first. "It gives rise to different ways users are adopting our products. So I think we see a way to look at these markets with a lot more thought and address them for the opportunity that they have, not just apply our global products there," he said.