Sundar Pichai, on his maiden visit to India after being appointed as the Internet search engine Google's CEO this August, has said India will pip the United States for the company's business by the middle of 2016.
He also said that Google will ramp up its headcount in India by hiring more people at its offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad.
The company is also setting up a new facility in Hyderabad, for which it signed an agreement with the Telangana government in May this year.
"Google is looking at hiring people for Bangalore and Hyderabad... We will also build a huge new campus in Hyderabad to build capabilities," he said at a Google for India event.
Pichai also announced a slew of initiatives aimed at "bringing Internet access to everyone".
"100 stations will have wi-fi by December 2016. Mumbai Central (station) to go live by January. This is in partnership with RailTel," he said, reports PTI.
Pichai will be meeting President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi also during his visit, besides addressing students at Delhi University college.
"Our focus on bringing Internet access to everyone, making sure our products are working for them in a meaningful way and then ensure our platform allows them to add their voice to the Internet," India-born Pichai said.
The new Google office with an office space of two million square feet in Hyderabad's Gachibowli area will be ready by 2019.
"About 12 months will be spent on planning and the construction work is supposed to start at around summer of 2016. The construction should take about two and a half years and we could have a facility as soon as early 2019, " Google world wide head for facilities and work places, David Radcliffe, was quoted as saying.
The company's technology development center in the city has a headcount of about 6,500 employees, which is likely to double once the new campus comes up, according to Telangana IT minister K Taraka Rama Rao, reported Business Standard.
On the importance of India, Pichai said, "We developed the offline version of YouTube in India, tried it here and are now taking that to other countries," Pichai said during his interaction with journalists in New Delhi.
