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Hyundai drives ahead as 1 in 3 buyers unlock Digital Key convenience
MUMBAI: No more fumbling for car keys Hyundai owners are now tapping their way into the future. Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) has announced that 33 per cent of buyers have signed up for its Digital Key feature, marking a sharp shift in how Indians want to interact with their cars. Rolled out first in the Hyundai ALCAZAR in September 2024, and extended to the Hyundai CRETA Electric in January 2025, the Digital Key uses NFC technology to replace the need for a physical key. Owners can simply tap their smartphone, smartwatch, or NFC card on the car’s door handle to lock or unlock, and place it on the wireless charging pad to start the engine.
The feature’s versatility has struck a chord 35 per cent of users are actively sharing their keys with family, friends, or drivers. Each key can be extended to up to three users or seven devices at a time, offering both flexibility and control. And for the forgetful, it eliminates the age-old panic of misplacing the car key.
HMIL managing director Unsoo Kim noted: “The enthusiastic response to Digital Key reaffirms our belief in creating technology that adds real value to everyday life. We were the first to launch connected car technology in India in 2019, and we remain committed to democratising such premium features.”
With Hyundai steadily shaping India’s connected mobility landscape, the success of Digital Key signals that tech-driven convenience is no longer a luxury, it’s an expectation. As uptake climbs, HMIL is expected to roll out the feature across more models, making the smartphone the new car key for millions of Indians.
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Google secures AP discom licence to power $15bn Vizag AI hub
First-of-its-kind move gives tech giant grid control for massive 1GW campus
VISAKHAPATNAM: Google has secured a rare electricity distribution company licence in Andhra Pradesh, marking a decisive shift from being just a power consumer to becoming a power distributor for its upcoming mega data centre hub in Visakhapatnam.
The move effectively rewrites the rulebook for hyperscalers in India. Instead of relying on state utilities, Google will be able to procure electricity directly from generators, including its own renewable sources. This not only cuts out intermediaries but also gives the company tighter control over supply, reliability and long-term costs.
For a business where electricity can account for up to 60 per cent of operating expenses, the economics are hard to ignore. Even more critical is uptime. Data centres demand near-perfect reliability, and owning the distribution layer allows Google to manage outages and load balancing with far greater precision.
At the heart of the plan is a sprawling 1-gigawatt data centre ecosystem spread across more than 600 acres in three locations near Vizag. With an estimated investment of $15 billion over five years, the project is set to become India’s largest single foreign direct investment and Google’s biggest AI-focused facility outside the United States.
The campus is being designed with artificial intelligence workloads in mind, housing the company’s custom tensor processing units to power services such as Gemini, Search and Google Cloud. In scale, the planned capacity is comparable to powering a small city.
Google is not building alone. It has partnered with Adani Infrastructure to develop the physical campuses, while Bharti Airtel will set up an international subsea cable landing station. This connectivity backbone is expected to link the hub directly to a dozen countries, ensuring low latency for global data traffic.
Vizag’s coastal location plays a key role in that strategy. It enables direct access to subsea cables and provides the large volumes of water needed for cooling data centre operations. Equally important is policy backing from the Government of Andhra Pradesh, which fast-tracked approvals and granted the uncommon discom licence to anchor the investment.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for April 28, 2026, with phased commissioning expected to begin by July 2028.
The broader signal is clear. As AI workloads surge, hyperscalers are no longer content plugging into existing infrastructure. They are beginning to build and control it. In Vizag, Google is not just setting up a data centre, it is wiring up its own future.
