Google unveiled a comprehensive Safety Charter in India on Tuesday, launching its fourth global security engineering center and expanding AI-powered fraud detection systems as digital scams surge across the country's payment networks. The initiative comes as fraud related to India's Unified Payments Interface system jumped 85% year-over-year to nearly ₹11 billion ($127 million) in losses.
The Safety Charter represents Google's most focused effort to combat online fraud in its largest market outside the United States, where sophisticated scammers increasingly use deepfake videos and fake official video calls to extort money from victims.
Google's security engineering center in India, announced at the company's Delhi summit, will partner with the Ministry of Home Affairs, academia, and small businesses to develop solutions for cybersecurity challenges unique to India's rapidly digitizing population12. The center joins existing facilities in Dublin, Munich, and Malaga.
"We want to solve what's happening in India, close to where the users are," said Heather Adkins, Google's Vice President of Security Engineering1. "The engineering talent here allows us to do that effectively."
The initiative focuses on three areas: protecting individuals from scams, safeguarding government and business infrastructure, and developing responsible artificial intelligence12. Google has partnered with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre to raise public awareness of cyber threats, building on its 2023 DigiKavach program that identifies malicious apps1.
Google's existing AI systems already process massive volumes of suspicious activity in India. Google Messages detects over 500 million suspicious messages monthly through AI-powered filters, while Google Play Protect blocked nearly 60 million attempts to install risky apps, stopping more than 220,000 dangerous applications on over 13 million devices12.
Google Pay, one of India's top UPI payment applications, has issued 41 million scam warnings to users23. The company prevented fraud worth ₹13,000 crore in 2024 alone through its payment platform4.
India faces projected cybercrime losses exceeding ₹20,000 crore by the end of 2025, with fraudsters increasingly using AI-generated deepfake videos of public figures like Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to promote fake investment schemes1.
"India often gives us a preview of global cyber trends," Adkins explained2. "Studying cybercrime here helps us prepare for what might spread elsewhere."
The company committed $20 million through Google.org to expand cybersecurity capacity across Asia-Pacific, including funding new cyberclinics and collaborating with institutions like IIT-Madras on post-quantum cryptography research3.
