Accelerator and startup credits program for ONDC
Google India is to launch an accelerator program for ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) to help businesses with the tools and resources they need to build and scale their digital commerce operations. Google Cloud is open sourcing a ready implementation of ONDC infrastructure and core APIs.
This implementation is specifically designed to facilitate scalability and security, enabling them to concentrate on business critical tasks on the network. Businesses will also have access to our Retail AI technology that will help enhance search experiences on the network, and the PaLM API to help improve the quality and descriptions of catalogs using generative AI.
To further support the ONDC ecosystem, it is also introducing a startup credits program where organizations that enable ONDC are eligible to apply for a USD $25,000 grant.
Project Vaani
Last year Google India launched Project Vaani, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), to collect anonymised speech data from people across 773 districts.
As part of the first milestone, IISc is open sourcing these diverse, high-quality datasets. Developers can now access over 4,000 hours of speech data across 38 languages, collected from 10K+ speakers, encompassing 80 districts, and use these datasets to build their own technology and applications that reflect the way local languages are spoken.
Open Buildings Datasets
Google India is also open-sourcing its Open Buildings datasets in India, which is based on satellite imagery that identifies the locations and outlines of over 200 million buildings in the country. Each of the identified buildings also includes a Plus Code, the open-source system that provides a unique address for a location.
Google hopes this will streamline the work of developers, authorities, and aid organizations, across urban planning and humanitarian response, environmental and climate science, essential services such as health and education, and more.
- Google India press release
