Google India launches campaign to help 50 mil women get online

BANGALORE, INDIA: With over 200 million Internet users in the country and growing, India is on its way to become the second largest Internet market in the world overtaking US. But only one third of India's online users are women. Internet can play a very important role in empowering women in India and help them to transform their lives.

Rajan Anandan, MD and VP sales and operations for Google India, said: "Lack of easy access to Internet, lack of knowledge on how to use the Internet and its relevance in their daily lives are the biggest barriers for women to get online. ‘Helping women get online' is an initiative that aims to overcome these barriers and empower women to improve their lives. With this initiative we are aiming to help 50 million additional women to get online by end of 2014 by undertaking a variety of initiatives across India."

The initiative will focus on creating awareness about the benefits of Internet for women, educate women to use the Internet to improve their lives and work with partners to enable easy Internet access points for women in the country.

In the first stage of the initiative, Google will launch a mass media campaign targeted at women and promote the specially designed website www.hwgo.com which will host content covering the very basics of Internet and special content that is relevant for women in India, available both in hindi and english.

The program will be supported by Intel, HUL and Axis Bank who have committed to drive this initiative through the joint outreach efforts including Internet training in their digital literacy efforts. Intel is also launching a mobile app called "Easy Step" for women which would be available on Android playstore.