Launched as a pilot scheme in Rajasthan in July 2015 along with Tata Trusts, Google announced the ambitious plans to scale up the Internet Saathi program to cover 300,000 villages across India. 

In Tamil Nadu, the program would be covering over 4,000 villages across six districts. As per the latest report released by Kantar IMRB - ICube - Rural Internet Report for 2017, there were 134 million active Internet users in rural India that continue to be dominated by male users. 

Using the trainer model, women in villages were equipped with smartphones and tablets, that enabled them to explore the world of Internet and help reduce the digital gender divide in rural India. 

IT minister M Manikandan said, “Google India is a valuable partner of the state government and we are happy to launch the Internet Saathi program that will benefit rural women, across our state. Our mission is to digitize Tamil Nadu and Google’s efforts in the state will help in that direction’’. 

Speaking on the occasion, Chetan Krishnaswamy, Director, Public Policy Google India, said, “We have been hard at work, in partnership with Tata Trusts to change the female-male ratio of new Internet users in rural India and in the last two years have seen it move from one in 10 in 2015 to three in 10 in 2017’’, he said. 

‘We are delighted with the progress we have made with the Internet Saathi model and the impact it has had on the saathis, their fami

lies, kids and their communities. Through our expansion in Tamil Nadu, we hope to benefit over 600K women in the first phase of the program and will be adding more villages as we move forward’’, he said. 

Google India and the Tamil Nadu Government also announced other initiatives to support the digitization efforts in the state. The IT giant will facilitate the provision of Google Cloud credits and access through its affiliate, for eligible startups engaged with Tamil Nadu Government’s startup initiative. 

Google India will also, through its Developer Relations team, provide technical mentorship and advisory support to various startups. 

Other initiatives included working together to make all government sites mobile friendly, introduce joint programs to help local small and medium businesses get online.