Regulators should understand economic value of seamless data flow: Google's Caesar Sengupta

Google is creating products for India at a rapid scale and payments are a critical part of this bouquet. It says it is on track to get more Indians to transact online, up from 100 million now. Speaking to Pratik Bhakta & Surabhi Agarwal on the sidelines of the ‘Google for India’ event in New Delhi on Tuesday, Caesar Sengupta, vice-president, Next Billion Users and Payments, at Google, said regulators should keep in mind that there is economic value in allowing data to flow seamlessly. Excerpts:Do you view RBI’s data localisation mandate as an impediment to growth?Where data flows seamlessly across jurisdictions, there is economic value. Innovation is encouraged. We have 1.3 billion people in India; 400 million people have used the internet but the reality is only 100 million are transacting online and a vast majority of the country is left out. That section cannot be brought in unless there are deep tech and consumer innovation. My hope is that (regulators) will keep these factors in mind.The deadline for implementing this is a month away and you have such big plans for Google Pay in India. Are you worried?Everything worries me. There is a great quote: Only the paranoid survive. So I think we all collectively stay in a state of worry, but we are also trying to take a step back and we are trying to study this, understand what’s happening.The government wants digital payments companies to set up Indian subsidiaries with separate CEOs. Do you find merit in that?We have been in India since 2004. We have senior leadership in India that is empowered to take decisions. We have a separate entity for payments, which we had way before launch, and we have product managers and engineers… in Bengaluru. Our approach has been to be much closer to India. And regulations or no regulations, we have always followed this approach and built great products.Google is trying to get more people online. How do you monetise these users when they come online?When a user logs into the Google Station app, they will get to see an ad. That is how we are monetising.Now that Google Tez is Google Pay, when can we start buying apps on Play Store through UPI?This will happen very soon. We are designing the best user experience and we think the payment flow can be very simple. UPI provides a lot of the capabilities for microtransactions. We are looking at bringing in all that very soon.What is your next strategy on Google Pay?We will start talking a bit more about Google Pay through marketing. We are not going to do away with all the promotional stuff like scratch cards since that brings the fun element, which is critical for us.

from The Economic Times https://ift.tt/2ojEaKk