New Delhi, July 9 2020 - Empowering remote workforce is the single biggest challenge today for millions of organisations of all sizes in India and Google Cloud is busy democratising and reinventing Cloud for all, especially the homegrown companies in the 'Local ke liye Vocal' times, Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Google Cloud India, said on Thursday.

The Indian government aims to create world-class desi apps and platforms and Google Cloud is right here to help them on their digital journey as they scale their operations to accommodate more users' traffic and humongous amount of data being generated.

"We are catering to the companies of all sizes - from startups to SMBs to large enterprises and the governments. Google Cloud offers great scalability, security and agility for home-grown startups, social media platforms and tech firms," Bajwa told IANS in a free-wheeling chat.

The homegrown regional language social media platform ShareChat decided to migrate to Google Cloud in April this year. The migration from its incumbent Cloud platform to Google Cloud took place amid the Covid-19 crisis.

"We are delighted to help ShareChat implement the world-class scalable and reliable infrastructure that will continue to enable it to deliver innovative and secure cloud-based services to millions of ShareChat users nationwide," said Bajwa.

ShareChat currently serves more than 60 million monthly active users in 15 different Indian languages. A large proportion of its active user base hails from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, with the majority of them relying on 2G networks.

Bajwa who joined Google Cloud in March has seen some key wins in a short span of time, despite lockdowns and social distancing in place.

According to the long-time industry veteran who earlier worked in top roles in IBM and Microsoft, the enterprises that were hesitant earlier to adjust to the new normal have now gravitated towards being the Cloud-driven organisations in India.

"There were several nuisances, including cultural, around going for Cloud and not all organisations in India were willing for 100 per cent digital transformation. The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns changed it all," Bajwa emphasized.

It forced enterprises in India to shift their operations overnight to immediately accommodate a remote workforce.

Earlier, customers had some form of technology to allow remote working for a couple of hours in a day.

"Video was the first capability that was fast adopted among the remote workforce. The consumption of Google Meet was quick and seamless in India among the digital natives," Bajwa told IANS.

According to independent media reports, Google Meet for Android has surpassed over 10 crore downloads globally on Play Store.

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has given Cleartrip significant value which it couldn't have achieved running its own data centres.

"Migrating on GCP was an architectural innovation for us. With the cloud, it's much easier to ramp up capacity in line with business needs. The relative ease of scalability has helped us recently in the launch of TravelSafe, our latest product offering which provides our customers up to date curated information on questions they may have on safe travel," said Manoj Sharma, CTO, Cleartrip.

"We also have a B2B offering serving travel needs of several large organizations and the shift to GCP helps us elevate their experience on our platform as well," Sharma added.

Healofy, which is a parenting social network for mothers, was born on the cloud.

"We built our tech stack completely on GCP. When we were building the Healofy app for Indian women starting with pregnant women and new moms, security and safety was the key and Google Cloud was a partner of choice as we scale and build for the future," said Gaurav Aggarwal, CEO and Co-founder, Healofy.

Leading managed hosting and multi-Cloud hybrid IT solution provider Netmagic Solutions this week partnered Google Cloud to create a Centre of excellence (CoE) that will enable their customers to accelerate their hybrid Cloud journey.

To help enterprises begin their journey towards digital transformation via building virtual workplaces, Deloitte and Google Cloud have announced to extend their strategic global alliance to India.

"My message to the Indian CEOs and technologists is clear: Use the opportunity to reinvent your ways of working and accelerate your journey to the Cloud," said Bajwa.