See Demonetisation As A Courageous Move, Big Supporter Of UPI Initiative: Google’s Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai, the Chennai-born CEO of Google, is in India to launch a new initiative for small and medium businesses, Digital Unlocked. In an interview with The Economic Times’ Surabhi Agarwal and TV Mahalingam, he spoke about a wide range of issues, including demonetisation, protectionism and government’s less-cash drive.

Here’s what he said on these issues:

On Demonetisation

Pichai said that he see demonetisation as a “bold courageous move”, adding that “digitising the country at the scale of India, and making it work well, truly will have a beneficial effect.” He also said that he sees India benefiting from the drive.

Against the common perception that people in India aren’t prepared for a less-cash economy, he said: “It is important to understand that a common person can make these transitions well. And there are better experts than me who are thinking about these things.”

On Unified Payments Interface

“I am excited at the opportunity”, Pichai said, adding that he supports the initiative. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is something that Google cares about and is looking closely at the initiative, he revealed. He said that he is excited about the conversations around UPI and the other platforms that India is developing.

“From our perspective, we think about anything that we can do to support better digitisation of payments, through things like Android we would do that. We are already big supporters of the UPI initiative”, The Economic Times quoted him as saying.

On Protectionism

Talking about the demand for protectionist policies in India, Pichai said he is confident that India can be competitive globally. “I am positive that over the next 5-10 years you will have more companies from India which will be competitive on the global stage”, the daily quoted him as saying.

Read the full interview here.