As AI races into classrooms around the world, Google is finding that the hardest lessons about how technology can truly scale are coming out not from Silicon Valley, but from Indian schools.
India has become a proving ground for Google’s educational AI amid growing competition, including from OpenAI and Microsoft. with more than one billion internet usersThe country currently records the highest global use of Gemini for learning, according to Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager for education, in an education system shaped by state-level curricula, strong government involvement, and uneven access to devices and connectivity.
Phillips spoke on the sidelines of Google’s AI Learning Forum in New Delhi this week, where he met with industry stakeholders, including K-12 school administrators and education officials, to gather feedback on how AI tools are being used in the classroom.
The scale of India’s education system helps explain why the country is such an important testing ground. The country’s school education system serves about 247 million students in nearly 1.47 million schools, according to the Indian government. Economic Survey 2025–26supported by 10.1 million teachers. The higher education system is one of the largest in the world, with more than 43 million students to be registered in 2021–22 — a 26.5% increase from 2014–15 — complicates efforts to introduce AI tools in a vast, decentralized, and unevenly resourced system.
One of the clearest lessons for Google is that AI in education cannot be launched as a single, centrally defined product. In India, where curriculum decisions sit at the state level and ministries play an active role, Phillips said Google should design educational AI so that schools and administrators — not companies — decide how and where to use it. This marks a shift for Google, which, like most Silicon Valley companies, has traditionally built products for global scale rather than catering to the preferences of individual institutions.
“We’re not delivering one-size-fits-all,” Phillips told TechCrunch. “It’s a diverse environment around the world.”
Beyond governance, that diversity is also changing the way Google thinks about its own AI-driven learning. The company is seeing more rapid multimodal learning applications in India, Phillips said, combining video, audio, and images alongside text — reflecting the need to reach students in a variety of languages, learning styles, and access levels, especially in classrooms that aren’t built around text-heavy instruction.
Maintain teacher-student relationships
A related shift is Google’s decision to design AI for education around the teacher, rather than the student, as the primary control point. The company is focusing on tools that help educators with planning, assessment, and classroom management, Phillips said, rather than passing AI experiences directly to students.
“Teacher-student relationships are critical,” he said. “We’re here to help you grow and develop, not replace you.”
In parts of India, AI in education is being introduced in classrooms that have never had a single device per student or reliable internet access. Google finds schools where devices are shared, connectivity isn’t consistent, or learning goes straight from pen and paper to AI tools, Phillips said.
“Access is universally critical, but how and when it happens varies greatly,” he said, referring to environments where schools rely on shared or teacher-led devices rather than one-to-one access.
Meanwhile, Google is translating early learning from India into deployment, including AI-powered JEE Main Preparation through Gemini, a national teacher training program involving 40,000 Kendriya Vidyalaya educators, and partnerships with government institutions in vocational and higher education, including India’s first AI-powered public university.
For Google, India’s experience is a preview of the challenges that will arise elsewhere as AI penetrates deeper into the public education system. The company anticipates issues of control, access, and localization — now evident in India — to bring AI to scale in global education.
From entertainment to learning are the top AI use cases
Google’s push also represents a broader shift in how people use GenAI. Entertainment has dominated AI use cases in the past year, Phillips said, adding that learning has now emerged as one of the most common ways people use the technology, especially among younger users. As students increasingly turn to AI to study, prepare for exams, and build skills, education has become an increasingly important — and consequential — arena for Google.
India’s complex education system also attracts Google’s competitors. OpenAI has begun building a local leadership presence focused on education, hiring former managing director of Coursera APAC Raghav Gupta as India and APAC head of education and launched the Learning Accelerator program last year. Microsoft, meanwhile, has partnership expanded with Indian institutions, government bodies, and edtech players, including Fisika Wallahto support AI-based learning and teacher training, highlighting how education is becoming an important battleground as AI companies seek to embed these tools into public systems.
At the same time, the latest Economic Survey of India highlights the risks to students from uncritical use of AI, including over-reliance on automated tools and the potential impact on learning outcomes. Citing studies by MIT and Microsoft, the survey notes that “reliance on AI for creative work and writing tasks contributes to cognitive atrophy and impairs critical thinking skills.” It’s a reminder that the race to get into the classroom is taking place amid concerns about how AI is making learning its own.
Whether Google India’s playbook serves as a model for AI in education elsewhere remains an open question. However, as GenAI moves deeper into the public education system, the pressures now seen in India will also emerge in other countries, making the lessons learned by Google difficult for the industry to heed.