India is teaching Google how AI in education can scale

As artificial intelligence continues to make its way into classrooms around the world, Google is discovering that some of the most important lessons about how AI can scale in education are coming not from Silicon Valley, but from schools across India.

India has emerged as a key proving ground for Google’s education-focused AI efforts, particularly as competition intensifies from rivals such as OpenAI and Microsoft. With more than a billion internet users, India now represents the highest global usage of Gemini for learning, according to Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager for education. That adoption is unfolding within an education system shaped by state-level curricula, strong government oversight, and uneven access to devices and connectivity.

Phillips was speaking on the sidelines of Google’s AI for Learning Forum in New Delhi this week, where he met with education officials, K–12 administrators, and industry stakeholders to understand how AI tools are being adopted and adapted inside Indian classrooms.

The sheer scale of India’s education system helps explain why it has become such a critical testing environment. According to the Indian government’s Economic Survey 2025–26, the country’s school education system serves around 247 million students across nearly 1.47 million schools, supported by roughly 10.1 million teachers. India’s higher education system is also among the largest globally, with more than 43 million students enrolled in 2021–22 — a 26.5% increase from 2014–15 — adding complexity to efforts to introduce AI across vast, decentralised, and unevenly resourced systems.

One of the clearest lessons for Google has been that education AI cannot be deployed as a single, centrally defined product. In India, where curriculum decisions are made at the state level and education ministries play an active role, Phillips said Google has had to design its tools so that schools and administrators — rather than the company — decide how and where AI is used. This marks a shift for Google, which has historically built products intended to scale globally with minimal localisation.

“We are not delivering a one-size-fits-all,” Phillips told TechCrunch. “It’s a very diverse environment around the world.”

That diversity is also shaping how Google approaches AI-powered learning. Phillips said the company is seeing faster adoption of multimodal learning in India, where AI tools combine text with video, audio, and images. This approach reflects the need to support students across multiple languages, learning styles, and levels of access, particularly in classrooms that are not built around text-heavy instruction.

Maintaining the teacher-student relationship

Another key shift has been Google’s decision to position teachers — not students — as the primary point of control for its education AI. Rather than offering direct-to-student AI tools, Google has focused on helping educators with lesson planning, assessments, and classroom management.

“The teacher-student relationship is critical,” Phillips said. “We’re here to help that grow and flourish, not replace it.”

In many parts of India, AI is being introduced in classrooms that have never had one device per student or reliable internet access. Google is encountering schools where devices are shared, connectivity is inconsistent, or learning environments move directly from pen-and-paper methods to AI-assisted tools.

“Access is universally critical, but how and when it happens is very different,” Phillips said, noting that some schools rely on shared devices or teacher-led access rather than one-to-one computing.

Google is already applying its learnings from India through a range of initiatives, including AI-powered JEE Main exam preparation using Gemini, a nationwide teacher training program reaching 40,000 Kendriya Vidyalaya educators, and partnerships with government institutions in vocational and higher education. These efforts include support for India’s first AI-enabled state university.

Gemini adds JEE Main preparation for Indian Engineering aspirants. Image Credits: Google

For Google, India’s experience is offering an early look at the challenges likely to emerge elsewhere as AI becomes embedded in public education systems. Issues around control, access, localisation, and governance — now prominent in India — are expected to shape how education AI scales globally.

From entertainment to learning as a top AI use case

Google’s focus on education also reflects a broader shift in how people use generative AI. Phillips said entertainment dominated AI use cases last year, but learning has now become one of the most common ways people engage with the technology, especially among younger users. As students increasingly turn to AI for studying, exam preparation, and skill development, education has become a more immediate and consequential battleground for AI providers.

India’s education sector is also drawing heightened attention from competitors. OpenAI has strengthened its local presence by appointing former Coursera APAC managing director Raghav Gupta as its India and APAC education head and launching a Learning Accelerator program last year. Microsoft has expanded its partnerships with Indian institutions, government bodies, and edtech companies such as Physics Wallah, with a focus on AI-based learning tools and teacher training.

At the same time, India’s latest Economic Survey has raised concerns about the risks of uncritical use of AI in education. Citing research from MIT and Microsoft, the survey warned that heavy reliance on AI for writing and creative tasks could contribute to cognitive atrophy and weaker critical thinking skills, underscoring the tensions surrounding AI’s growing role in learning environments.

Whether Google’s India-focused approach becomes a global template for education AI remains uncertain. However, as generative AI moves deeper into public education systems worldwide, the challenges and lessons emerging from India are increasingly complex for the industry to ignore.