Cloud mobile supercharged growth for small businesses

Posted by Mohit Pande, Country Manager - India, Google for Work

India’s small businesses aren’t small when it comes to economic impact. They employ over 106 million people, make up almost a quarter of the workforce, and contribute close to half of the nation’s manufacturing output. As the country looks to drive growth, create jobs and increase exports as part of the Digital India initiative, we teamed up with Deloitte to see how cloud and mobile tools could help small businesses support these national goals, and the results are striking.

The new report, “Connected Small Business — Unlocking India’s digital potential” finds that businesses that use cloud and mobile tools are more profitable, more innovative, export more and have happier, more productive staff. Compared to offline businesses, those that use cloud and mobile tools grow 27% annually, are four times more innovative and are 65% more likely to be exporting.

They’re also job creators — 84% said they’re hiring. With employees at these digitally engaged businesses six times more satisfied with their work and nine times more collaborative, it’s clear that technology decisions are impacting more than the bottom line: they also create happier, more productive employees.

As someone who talks with businesses about how Google Apps for Work has helped their businesses grow, go global or connect and collaborate with their employees more easily, these findings put some numbers to the great stories I hear everyday.

Freshdesk employees collaborate on tablets at their Chennai office.

Take software startup Freshdesk for example. Founded in Chennai in 2010 with eight staff, they now employ over 450 people and have over 59 million end users — 90% of which come from outside of India. Google Apps has supercharged their team’s ability to meet this rapid growth. With Google Drive, employees work together on documents in real time from anywhere, on any device. While video conferencing with Google Hangouts helps the team stay in touch regardless of timezone or location.

Or take Bangalore delivery business SpoonJoy: founded in 2014, they now deliver around 3,000 healthy and delicious meals to hungry Bangaloreans everyday. Their team uses Google Apps and estimates that cloud and mobile tools enable them to open their business in a new area in a third of the time it would take without these tools.

It’s not just startups or technology businesses that are reaping these digital dividends. Logistics company Pickingo estimates that having real-time access to delivery information with cloud and mobile tools has increased its orders by around 15%. Manufacturing company EMCO attributes 30% of their business growth to the adoption of digital technology.

Companies that are able to collaborate across teams and even continents are the ones unlocking great ideas that are succeeding in India today. These businesses understand that being digitally engaged goes beyond having a website. They’re enabling their staff to work from anywhere on any device, and are making important business information accessible to them. With India focused on supercharging economic growth and employment, the winning formula could just be the greater adoption of cloud and mobile tools by the countrys small businesses.

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Google for Education hits the road

Posted by Kate Howell, Product Marketing Manager, Google for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Remember back in 2008 when the Google for Education team road-tripped across the US, visiting universities using Google Apps for Education? We hardly do, either, which is why we were itching to get back out on the road. This time in the UK. And we brought along a pop-up classroom instead of a bio-fuel bus.

In four weeks, we visited seven schools in England, Wales and Scotland that are doing inspiring and creative things with education technology. We wanted to hear more about how Google for Education tools are helping them to transform their approach to teaching and learning, and we wanted to provide an opportunity for other educators nearby to hear and learn from them, too.

Our pop-up classroom at Wigan UTC

And we werent disappointed. We heard from Cramlington Learning Village in Newcastle, where Physical Education students have become more engaged by doing their own real-time personalized fitness tracking with Google Sheets on their Chromebooks. That’s what we call healthy competition!

Students of GSCE Physics were getting a last-minute helping hand with their study thanks to revision videos created by the science department hosted on Youtube at The Streetly Academy in Birmingham. “What’s great about them is that we’re used to their style of teaching and their voices – and our teachers know how we learn best,” says Jack Webb, a student of The Streetly Academy.

City Heights E-Act Academy in London also gave media teachers some great ideas, by showing us how their students utilized Google Drive when creating their BBC School Report and giving us a demonstration of their HTML writing abilities.

Students at City Heights E-Act Academy showed off their HTML writing capabilities

We also loved how inquisitive students at the Horsforth Campus of Leeds City College used Google Draw to document and track changes to nearby wetland areas over time, based on their hypothesis about how a nearby motorway is affecting the surrounding ecosystem.

Students at Preston Lodge High School working collaboratively in our pop-up classroom

We toured the world’s first controlled-environment agricultural facility using a Vertical High Density Growing system in an educational institution at Wigan UTC. There, budding food technicians can get hands-on with technology that can help to combat current and future food production issues, working together to track production levels collaboratively with Google Sheets.

In East Lothian, the pipe band at Preston Lodge High School treated us to a roof-lifting performance to start the morning!

The Preston Lodge High School Pipe Band warming up

We heard lots of teacher tips along the way, but our favourite was from Assistant Headteacher David Beesley, who uses boomerang for Gmail to set his emails to send at times he knows his staff are at their desks.

Asst. Headteacher David Beesley sharing his favourite Gmail tips

Students at St. Julians showed us their favourite apps on Google Play

One day Google for Education might pop up—or roll into—a town near you, but in the meantime you can check out a video of our pop-up classroom being built, captured by the impressive media students at St. Julian’s in Newport, Wales.

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