Google today announced two new initiatives to strengthen its enterprise presence in India, with a focus on new startups and legacy businesses in the country. The Silicon-valley tech giant will now cover the fees of Google Apps for Work for any enterprise, which might be locked into such an agreement with any other provider. The free period is only for the duration of the earlier contract. Essentially Google is hoping to increase the list of legacy enterprises using its suite of business apps by offering them a cost-free period. On the startup front, Google announced $20,000 worth free credits in Cloud Services for the period of one year to 1000 startups. The company will also offer free consultation and training to these startups. The 1000 startups will need to meet certain criteria with regards to funding, usage, etc to be eligible for the credit. [related-post] Google’s suite of business apps include Gmail, Hangouts, Docs for business as well as analytics app and Google Vault, which lets business archive, search their email. Google for Work president Amit Singh, pointed out that currently Google has over 2 million paid businesses using its app services, a number that it want to increase significantly. “Less than 1 per cent of computing globally has moved on to the cloud. Many enterprises and business are still stuck with legacy systems, older softwares, servers, etc. With Google’s App for Business, we are offering an entirely cloud-based system, that reduces costs significantly and increases efficiency,” said Singh. According to Singh, startups in India have really taken to Google’s business suite with 80 per cent startups going for the company’s services. “We are already powering top startups likes Flipkart, Paytm, Jabong, Myntra, etc in India. This is fastest growing market for Google apps,” he added. And it’s not just startups that Google has managed to rope in for its cloud-based enterprise suite. Older established businesses like Bombay Dyeing, Hero Motorcorp, JSW etc are also taking turning to Google’s Cloud. “What we’re seeing is that most businesses, especially startups start with Gmail and Docs, move on to video conferencing via Hangouts. Then of course, some established businesses have taken to Google Vault for better information management systems,” said Singh. On the security aspect, Google says that it offers full encryption to its business customers, where the encryption keys are held by the business. Google did not comment on whether they would eventually bring their data centres to India. Rival Microsoft which has also been focussing on enterprise in India, has 3 data centres in India, offering local cloud services.
