Google, at its Google I/O Connect India 2025 event, announced a slew of new initiatives and AI capabilities to assist the Indian developer and startup ecosystems. The event held in Bengaluru, on Thursday, July 23, extended Google’s lasting commitment toward empowering Indian developers. Along with localising data processing of its high-performance thinking model Gemini 2.5 Flash, the tech giant announced new Agentic AI tools in Firebase Studio and a new training programme with leading gaming engine platform Unity.
“Indian developers are writing the next chapter of India’s success story, using AI capabilities to build real-world applications that are reaching millions of businesses and people across India and the world. We have been inspired by their solutions and proud that many have chosen our AI, including Gemini, Gemma and GenMedia models like Veo and Imagen, to build their innovations,” said Dr Manish Gupta, senior director for India and APAC at Google DeepMind, who opened the event.
Gupta added that Google remains steadfast in bringing its industry-leading, cutting-edge capabilities to accelerate the journeys of startups and India’s leadership in a global AI-led future.
The company also announced collaborations with 3 India AI Mission Startups to create innovative solutions to facilitate the development of India’s Make in India AI models. Based on third-party evaluations, Google Play and the Android ecosystem raked in Rs 4 lakh crore in revenue for app publishers and the wider economy in India in 2024. The search giant also backed the creation of 35 lakh direct, indirect, and spillover jobs in India.
With the rollout of Gemini 2.5 Flash processing, along with localised and low-latency AI for healthcare, finance, and public services, Google is deepening its AI commitment in India. At present, Google’s open models like Gemma are powering innovation in India through its partners like Soket AI, Sarvam, and Gnani. Besides, Google’s collaboration with IIT Bombay’s Bharat Gen looks at boosting Indic language tools for underserved communities.
When it comes to mobile commerce, Google is expanding its Maps features with more accurate global data. Additionally, AI-powered summaries and India-specific pricing are assisting developers in building smarter, cost-effective and locally relevant generative AI applications across the country.
In addition to the recently announced cloud-based agentic AI workspace, Firebase Studio, which helps create full-stack AI applications with single prompts, Google is also working to introduce new agentic tools and capabilities. Firebase Studio features optimised AI templates along with Agent Mode to assist developers to generate powerful apps on a wide range of development frameworks.
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On Google Play, India has the second-largest group of active developers, and it supports over one million jobs in 2024. With Android being integral to India’s digital growth, its open-source nature has helped device makers save over Rs 25,000 crore in development costs. In order to further boost growth, the tech giant has also launched the free ‘Google Play x Unity Game Developer Training’ for Indian developers in collaboration with state governments and GDAI.
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