Google announces that it will take its Internet Saathi CSR initiative to 3 lakh villages

Internet giant Google today said it will expand its ‘Internet Saathi’ programme — which works with women in rural India to make them digitally literate — to three lakh villages in the country.

Google had launched the programme in July 2015 in partnership with Tata Trusts as a pilot in Rajasthan.

“In two years, the programme has reached one lakh villages and is already live in 10 states. About 25,000 fully trained Internet Saathis are working everyday across these villages to help women and children learn about the Internet,” Google South East Asia and India Director Marketing Sapna Chadha said.

These states include Gujarat, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Tripura, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

Google aims to scale the programme to cover three lakh villages across India, the company said in a statement.

In total, over 10 million women have gained from the programme so far and have become familiar with the benefits of using the Internet in their daily lives, it added.

Google is expanding the programme to two new states — Haryana and Bihar. In Haryana, about 1,000 villages will be covered, while in Bihar, over 7,000 villages will be covered.

Chadha pointed out that India’s Internet usage is still dominated by …read more