BENGALURU: Google has picked up a significant minority stake in hyper-local concierge and delivery player Dunzo , its first direct investment in an Indian startup underlining how the global search giant is quietly getting into an investment mode in the country.Google led a $12-million investment in the Bengaluru-based startup which also saw participation of early backers Aspada Investments and Blume Ventures. The investment is part of Google's ‘Next Billion Users’ push, as it seeks to build an ecosystem in India across high-frequency hyper-local transactions as well as in the healthcare, financial services, and education sectors.Google wants to build an ecosystem in India similar to those of Flipkart, Paytm-Alibaba and Amazon India, ecommerce giants that are investing significantly across food-delivery, grocery and local services, said people familiar with Google’s plans for the country.The Dunzo deal comes after Google International LLC quietly infused Rs 1,204 crore in its main local unit, Google India Pvt Ltd, this year—its largest and only investment in the unit since 2008, when it infused Rs 26 crore in it. The size of the latestinfusion, previously unreported, underlines the company’s intent to spend more aggressively on Google India, which has been profitable for over a decade and yet not been aggressive on spending here.“I see a change in tack,” said Rutvik Doshi, Managing Director at Inventus Capital and a former Googler, adding that Google probably now sees India as a large enough market to make investments. “After getting the first 2 billion users, Google has realised that to get the next 1 billion they will need to rethink their product stack and approach, as none of the new users has grown up on internet and have a different behaviour, socio-economic background and use case.”Google did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.Over the last few months, Google has been spending aggressively in India, offering discounts on its payments app, Tez, as well as on its hyper-local services aggregator, Areo.Experts see possible synergies linking the investment in Dunzo with Areo and Tez.Dunzo, currently present only in Bengaluru, runs an assortment of errands for users, such as picking up food from restaurants and groceries from stores, or your mobile charger that you forgot at a friend’s place. Dunzo, initially launched on WhatsApp in 2015, handles 3,500-4,000 tasks a day.“Dunzo as a product ends up replacing the local search experience. Largely, the goal with the product has been how do you make ‘local’ easy—either it is moving stuff or interacting with local stores,” said Dunzo chief executive Kabeer Biswas. He termed the Google deal a financial investment, but declined to share specifics.Google’s investment in Dunzo was through Google Asia Pacific, and not through Google Capital, which has backed domestic startups including education technology firm Cuemath and automobile classifieds company Cardekho.Dunzo plans to expand to half a dozen cities across India by the end of 2018, and to ramp up to 100,000 transactions a day by the end of 2018 from about 100,000 transactions a month now.