India is teaching Google how AI in education can grow

As AI rushes into classrooms around the world, Google is finding that the hardest lessons about the impact of technology aren’t coming from Silicon Valley, but from Indian schools.

India has become a proving ground for Google AI studies amid growing competition from competitors, including OpenAI and Microsoft. I am more than a billion internet usersThe country now uses Gemini worldwide for learning, according to Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager of education, within an educational system made up of high-quality public education, strong government involvement, and unparalleled access to equipment and connections.

Phillips was speaking on the sidelines of Google’s AI for Learning Forum in New Delhi this week, where he met with industry stakeholders, including K-12 school administrators and education officials, to get feedback on how AI tools are being used in classrooms.

India’s educational development helps explain why the country has become such a hotbed of experimentation. School education in the country serves about 247 million students in about 1.47 million schools, according to the Indian government. Economic Survey 2025–26supported by 10.1 million teachers. Its higher education system is one of the largest in the world, and more than 43 million students registered in 2021-22 – a 26.5% increase from 2014-15 – disrupting efforts to introduce AI tools for large, distributed, and hardware-less systems.

One of Google’s clearest lessons was that AI in education cannot be dismissed as a single, centralized entity. In India, where education decisions rest with the government and services play a major role, Phillips said Google had to make its education AI so that schools and administrators – not the company – decide how and where to use it. This marks a change for Google, which, like many Silicon Valley companies, has already designed products to grow globally rather than follow the dictates of corporations.

“We’re not offering full coverage,” Phillips told TechCrunch. “It’s a different place around the world.”

Beyond leadership, this diversity is redefining how Google thinks about AI-driven learning. The company is seeing rapid adoption of multi-media learning in India, Phillips said, including video, audio, and visuals alongside text — highlighting the importance of reaching students in a variety of languages, learning styles, and access levels, especially in classrooms that aren’t built around heavy instruction.

Maintaining the teacher-student relationship

A related change has been Google’s decision to build its learning AI around teachers, rather than students, as the first step towards improvement. The company has focused on tools that help teachers plan, test, and manage classrooms, Phillips said, rather than overwhelming them with student-directed AI experiences.

“The teacher-student relationship is difficult,” he said. “We’re here to support growth and development, not replace it.”

In some parts of India, AI in education is being introduced in classrooms that have never had one device per student or reliable internet. Google is facing schools where tools are shared, communication isn’t consistent, or learning to jump from pen and paper to AI tools, Phillips said.

“Access is important all over the world, but how and when it happens is very different,” he added, pointing to areas where schools rely on shared or teacher-led tools rather than one-on-one access.

Meanwhile, Google is translating its early learnings from India to transportation, including AI-powered JEE intensive preparation through Gemini, an international teacher training program to train 40,000 Kendriya Vidyalaya teachers, and collaborations with government institutions in vocational and higher education, including India’s first AI-powered university.

For Google, India’s experience is indicative of the challenges it may face elsewhere as AI moves deeper into human learning. The company expects challenges related to control, access, and sustainability — which are evident in India — to change the way AI grows globally.

From entertainment to learning as a major application of AI

Google’s push also reflects a major shift in how people are using GenAI. Entertainment was at the forefront of AI use last year, said Phillips, who added that learning has emerged as one of the most popular ways people use technology, especially among younger users. As students turn to AI to study, prepare for exams, and improve skills, education will immediately start to — and need — Google’s circle.

Hard learning in India is also attracting interest from Google’s competitors. OpenAI has started to create a local leadership that focuses on education, recruitment former CEO of Coursera APAC Raghav Gupta as its theme of Indian and APAC studies is to launch the Learning Accelerator program last year. Microsoft, meanwhile, has developing relationships and Indian corporations, government agencies, and edtech players, including Physics Wallahsupporting AI education and teacher training, showing how education is becoming a battleground as AI companies seek to embed their tools into human behavior.

At the same time, a recent study by the Economic Survey of India highlights the risk to students from the misuse of AI, including over-reliance on electronic devices and the potential impact on academic outcomes. Citing research by MIT and Microsoft, the study said that “relying on AI for creative work and writing contributes to cognitive impairment and the deterioration of critical thinking skills.” This serves as a reminder that the race to get into the classroom is happening amid growing concerns about how AI is designed to learn.

Whether Google India’s playbook will become a model for AI in education elsewhere remains an open question. However, as GenAI moves deeper into people’s education systems, the problems that are now visible in India may also appear in other countries, which makes the lessons that Google is learning there difficult for companies to ignore.