‘We are committed to continuing our investment in India’: Google Cloud exec Matt Renner

Renner and Bedi emphasised Google’s competitive advantage in its AI and ML capabilities, open platform strategy, and support for digital natives. The duo reiterated India’s importance as both a consumer and creator economy for cloud and AI solutions. It needs to be noted that Google has been actively investing in engineering talent, customer engagement, and strategic partnerships across the country. 

When asked about how Google Cloud ensures that it meets the unique needs of diverse industries and customers across different regions, Renner responded by saying that from a global perspective, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has significantly expanded over the last six years and is now operating in 200 countries. “This year, we announced expansions into Thailand and Malaysia, and we have two large hubs, including two Cloud data centres and six zones in India,” Renner told Indianexpress.com.

On specific initiatives aimed at improving customer satisfaction and engagement, Renner said, “Providing local coverage and support is crucial for meeting industry-specific needs. We also recognise that many of our customers operate globally, so we are expanding our coverage and organisation to provide local support.” 

Renner said that when it comes to customer satisfaction, Google Cloud is using technology and AI to enhance the customer experience. This, according to him, includes instantly addressing customer sentiment issues, offering information support teams swiftly, and ensuring clear communication to resolve issues efficiently.  “We pride ourselves on having the best-performing cloud, which contributes to customer satisfaction. Our ongoing investments, particularly in the APAC region, are driven by the economic power and opportunities this region presents, benefiting both our customers and our business,” he said. 

On the other hand, speaking about major trends in the Indian cloud market, Bedi said that one of the key characteristics of the Indian market is the massive scale at which businesses operate here, given the size of the economy. According to him, for Google Cloud, when building solutions for India, the primary considerations are scale, security, scalability, and platform innovation. 

“Beyond that, we are seeing major trends around generative AI. The market clearly sees us pulling ahead with our open and integrated stack for AI. Enterprises, digital natives, and startups are looking to use AI not just to improve processes, but also for business transformation, customer experience, internal productivity, and embedding AI into their products and processes. We’re seeing significant conversation happening in the entire generative AI space,” Bedi said. 

Bedi also said that the second big emerging area is security. According to Bedi, as digital footprints increase and more assets are moving online, there is a surge in security incidents. “Customers are keen to engage with Google Cloud on securing their infrastructure through our offerings like Mandiant, Chronicle, etc. Google pioneered zero trust architectures, so customers want those conversations with us,” he said, adding that the third major area is data as customers realise their data strategy is the foundational building block.