By Newley Purnell 

NEW DELHI -- Alphabet Inc.'s Google is expanding its efforts to connect with millions of Indians, using free Wi-Fi and tailor-made products, as it seeks to harness the country's growing online population.

Executives at a conference in New Delhi Tuesday unveiled the new products and initiatives which are aimed at attracting new users who are watching their data costs. Many Indians can't afford monthly data plans and only buy mobile access in small chunks.

The company said it is set to launch a new version of its YouTube app, YouTube Go, that it says works even with the slowest internet connections and allows users to share videos between devices. Many people in India exchange digital content using gadgets like thumb drives to avoid downloads that incur mobile data charges.

Google will also add a feature to its Chrome mobile web browser that allows users to download pages for offline viewing, while customers of the Google Play Store will be able to choose to download apps only when connected to Wi-Fi, saving on mobile data costs.

The new YouTube app will be available first in India and could be rolled out in other countries later, while the Chrome and Play Store features will be available soon in India and other markets.

Many people in India connect to the web via low-cost smartphones over patchy web connections.

"This is where new users are going to come from and their needs are different," Caesar Sengupta, a Google vice president of product management, said in an interview.

"India is all about mobile," said Rajan Anandan, Google's vice president and managing director for Southeast Asia and India.

The Mountain View, Calif. company last year said it was launching a free Wi-Fi project in a partnership with the Indian government. Google says it is now available in 53 railway stations in India and that 3.5 million users use the service every month.

Google is confident that it can reach its goal of expanding the program to 100 stations by the end of the year, Mr. Sengupta said. Surveys found some 15,000 people in India every day get online for the first time via the railway Wi-Fi project, he said.

Mr. Sengupta said Google is broadening its Wi-Fi effort with a new initiative called Google Station. The company will provide software so that owners of establishments like cafes and shopping malls can provide their own Wi-Fi access and charge users for it, if they wish.

Google is eager to lure new users in fast-growing emerging markets like India so that it can tap into advertising revenues in those countries, according to analysts. Consultant McKinsey & Co. reckons some one billion people in India still lack Web access.

Many of the Indians who do have internet access don't have much money to spend, presenting a challenge for tech firms. The country's gross domestic product per capita is about $1,500, according to the World Bank, compared with about $8,000 in China and $56,000 in the U.S.

Google is effectively shut out of China, having ceased most operations there in 2010 after disagreements with the government about censorship, meaning India is a key battleground.

Google is one of several U.S. technology firms looking to tap India. Ride sharing startup Uber Technologies Inc., which last month abandoned its costly battle for China's riders by swapping its local operations there for a minority stake in the country's homegrown champion, Didi Chuxing Technology Co., has said it is hiring more engineers in India and improving its mapping capabilities in India.

India is Facebook Inc.'s second largest market outside of the U.S., while e-commerce titan Amazon.com Inc. said in June that it would invest $3 billion in India to add to the $2 billion it said it was pouring into the country in 2014.

Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell @wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 27, 2016 10:04 ET (14:04 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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