TLDR: Google has announced that its Gemini 2.5 Flash AI model will now support on-shore processing in India, utilizing local data centers. This move, unveiled at Google I/O Connect India 2025 in Bengaluru, aims to meet data residency, security, and low-latency requirements for regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, and public services. The initiative is part of a broader effort to empower Indian developers with advanced AI and geospatial tools, including India-specific pricing for Google Maps UI components and collaborations with local AI startups.
Bengaluru, India – Google has made a significant stride in its commitment to the Indian market, announcing at its I/O Connect India 2025 event in Bengaluru that its efficient and low-latency AI model, Gemini 2.5 Flash, will now support on-shore processing within the country. This strategic move leverages local Indian data centers, ensuring that data processing adheres to critical data residency and security regulations, particularly vital for highly regulated sectors like healthcare, banking, finance, and public services. The on-shore processing capability also promises to deliver faster, low-latency AI performance for Indian developers.
Manish Gupta, Senior Director for India and APAC at Google DeepMind, emphasized the importance of this development, stating, ‘Indian developers are literally writing the next chapter of India’s success story, using AI capabilities to build real-world applications that are reaching millions of businesses and people across India and the world.’ This initiative is designed to empower India’s burgeoning developer ecosystem, enabling them to build and deploy full-stack AI applications with greater speed and efficiency.
Beyond Gemini 2.5 Flash, Google unveiled a comprehensive suite of AI and geospatial tools tailored for Indian developers. A key enhancement includes the integration of Google Maps data with Vertex AI, which will improve grounding accuracy and enable more accurate and location-aware responses from large language models (LLMs). Developers working on logistics, travel, and location-based services will benefit from access to more detailed and locally relevant data about over 250 million places worldwide. Additionally, AI-powered summaries are being rolled out in the Places API, allowing developers to embed concise, Gemini-powered overviews of real-world locations into their applications, saving users time and resonating with local needs.
To further lower the barrier to entry for Indian developers, Google has introduced tailored India-specific pricing for its Maps Places UI Kit, making it more affordable to build engaging, location-based features. The company also highlighted the significant economic impact of its platforms, noting that the Play and Android ecosystems contributed Rs 4 lakh crore in revenue and generated 35 lakh jobs in 2024.
In a move to foster local innovation, Google is collaborating with three India AI Mission startups—Sarvam, Soket AI, and Gnani—on ‘Make-in-India’ AI models based on Gemma. An example of this collaboration is Sarvam’s recent ‘Sarvam-Translate’ model. Furthermore, in partnership with IIT Bombay’s BharatGen, Google is advancing Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) models for Indic languages. For the gaming community, Google has launched the ‘Google Play x Unity Game Developer Training’ program, in collaboration with Unity and GDAI, targeting 500 Indian developers with over 30 hours of specialized training.
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This series of announcements at Google I/O Connect India 2025 underscores Google’s deep commitment to accelerating India’s digital and AI revolution, providing the necessary infrastructure and tools to drive innovation and economic growth.
