Google launches Market Access Program to help Indian AI startups scale globally

India’s AI startup ecosystem is moving decisively from pilots to production, with companies increasingly building real-world, revenue-ready products across healthcare, agriculture and education, as Google on Thursday announced new initiatives to help Indian AI-first startups scale globally.

At the Google AI Startups Conclave, the company unveiled the Google Market Access Program to help startups bridge the gap between successful pilots and repeatable enterprise adoption.

“If you solve for India, you build for the world,” Google said, signalling a sharper focus on helping Indian startups reach global markets faster.


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Google launches Market Access Program

The newly launched Market Access Program is aimed at AI startups that have working products but struggle with enterprise readiness, trust and go-to-market execution. The programme will offer global selling expertise, access to Google’s enterprise network and immersion in key international markets. Applications are now open.

Google said the initiative is designed to support startups at the critical scale-up stage, where access and credibility often determine long-term success.

Full-stack support, from compute to capital

Google also reiterated its full-stack approach to startup support, spanning infrastructure, models, safety, skilling and capital.

On infrastructure, the company said Indian startups can build on the same cloud and AI stack that powers Google globally, backed by clean energy and large-scale data centre capacity. It flagged its upcoming Global AI Hub in Visakhapatnam, a 1-gigawatt facility positioned as a long-term anchor for India’s AI economy.

Startups will also get access to Google’s most advanced AI models, including Gemini for complex reasoning and Gemma for open research, alongside Private AI Compute, which combines cloud-based AI with on-device security to keep sensitive data user-controlled.

New models for healthcare and on-device AI

To support deep-tech innovation, Google announced new additions to its open Gemma model family, focused on healthcare and agent-based systems — two areas seeing rapid adoption in India.

MedGemma 1.5, an open 4-billion-parameter model, is designed for population-scale healthcare AI and supports complex medical imaging workflows, including CT and MRI scans, histopathology and lab report analysis. The launch builds on Google’s collaboration with AIIMS, which is using MedGemma to develop India’s Health Foundation Models as part of the country’s digital public infrastructure.

Google also introduced FunctionGemma, a lightweight model tuned for function calling, enabling startups to build low-latency, on-device AI agents that can work even on low-end devices and without continuous internet access.

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A $126 billion opportunity

Alongside the conclave, Inc42 released the ‘Bharat AI Startups Report 2026’, supported by Google, projecting India’s AI market to reach $126 billion by 2030. Nearly 47% of enterprises are already moving AI use cases from pilot to production, the report said.

Falling compute costs and public digital infrastructure are allowing founders to shift spending from infrastructure to product innovation. India’s complexity — from linguistic diversity to uneven connectivity — is increasingly being seen as a strength, with “Bharat-tested” AI emerging as a global benchmark for resilience.

Trust is also becoming a key differentiator, with startups that embed safety, privacy and security by design more likely to win long-term enterprise contracts.

Google pointed to startups such as Cloudphysician, which has reduced ICU mortality rates by 40%, and Rocket Learning, which is personalising education at scale, as examples of outcome-led AI adoption.