Next Billion Dollar Business Opportunity In India Amitabh Kant

TITLE: v4_2w_p_bGo CHANNEL: Unknown DATE: ---TRANSCRIPT--- Startup India, you’ve literally [music] made starting a company now uh something that people actually look forward to.

Startup India actually I went to the prime minister and he made me do this presentation again and again and had that not happened PTM wouldn’t have happened, Razer Bay wouldn’t have happened, Zomato wouldn’t have happened, Ola wouldn’t happen and I picked up the best practices in the world. So everything in the world there’s nothing which has not been done. Pick up the best do 15% better, you create a completely better India. We had just 156 startups. Today we have a 170,000 startups. If I’m a 21-year-old, right? And I want to set up something in tourism. There a lot of people like that here. How do you suggest they start? India is too large a country. It’s bigger than 24 countries of Europe. I came back from the UK just so that I could work here at NITI Aayog and [music] you know with sir because I was totally inspired by his vision of transforming India. You have had such an illustrious career and more than the career I think the [music] impact that you’ve had starting from Kerala then being called to the center to lead tourism for the entire country. Heading Niti Aayog after your retirement. No but I’ve had very very tough times also in my life. I was suspended. I was kept without a posting for 10 months and I thought that was the end of my career. Do you think India has done well as a tourist destination? We need to bring tourism center stage. It is the fastest way to create jobs and you need about [music] 15 states of India to become champions of tourism. India’s in the process of buying about 1,600 planes. 1,600 planes means you’re going to have Indians flying out. You need international tourists to come into India. Let’s go back to Kerala for a second. I’ll take Kerala back to its root. Build Kerala on completely new products. I’ll differentiate Kerala from the rest of the world. And that is how we defined it as God’s own country. I want to talk about the book that’s come up. How should one read this book? I’m going to make this a required reading in some of our courses. Read it like a story book. It’s not a technical book. It’s a book for common person. But once you finished reading the book, I’m absolutely sure that you’ll become a startup entrepreneur. So AI currently consumes more energy than Japan and some of the countries. During the heat waves in London, Oracle and Google data centers got knocked offline. And today, can you imagine the world without AI? Your chat GPDs of the world will get stuck if your data centers get knocked out. Our entire higher education budget is, I believe, $55,000 crores. That comes down to what? $6 billion essentially. So 6 billion was the budget of UPEN where I went of one university. We can be 30% cheaper, 60% cheaper. We can’t be 99% cheaper. I can give you schemes and schemes and schemes where government has provided the outlay and those schemes have failed. You need so much capital to do any of these businesses. You know in India while private equity is there and you can get a $100 million investment but to get that first $100,000 investment that’s where the true gap is at. First of all, I would love to welcome Amitab Khanser. So, it’s such a pleasure to have you. I met you I think four or five years ago just after co and I had the pleasure of visiting you at your home and since then it’s been on my agenda that I have to bring you to campus and finally after 3 four years we are able to do it. No no no wonderful and since I met you you’ve you’ve grown younger and younger. So the white hair will not agree with that but [laughter] but say you you have had such an illustrious career and more than the career I think the impact that you’ve had uh starting from Kerala uh where you were a bureaucrat the senior bureaucrat then being called to the center uh to lead tourism for the entire country and then thereafter heading NITIO after your retirement doing that for almost 6 8 years and then thereafter obviously managing the entire G20 that career sir is is there’s so many highlights. Um and I was trying to figure out how I should do today’s conversation. No, but I’ve had very very tough times also in my life. So which one comes to your mind? The tough time. Let’s start with that. So you know I was um district collector of Calikut where Vasco Deama had landed and discovered India and it was said that if Vasco Deama was to come back he’ll find Kalikut exactly as he had left it. Uh it had narrow roads there was lot of encroachments in the heart of the city. uh there was uh all kind of uh reckless construction all over. So when I took over the as collector soon thereafter I was also made uh the municipal corporation was supered and I was made the mayor of the city and I took it as an opportunity to clean up the city. So I widened about 18 roads. I demolished over 500 odd construction. I created a new airport in Calikut. I widened the runway. I created a beautiful library because it was the heart of literacy in Kerala. Little did I realize that after uh 4 years when I leave Calikat, one of the persons whose five-star hotel I had broken would go on to become a minister and [laughter] I will suffer the consequences of that. So I was uh suspended. I was kept without a posting for 10 months and I thought that was the end of my career and I will uh you know I should leave the service. So it was uh you know a terrible period of my career. So how long were you then without a posting? I was without a posting for almost 11 months you know as a punishment posting uh made me secretary tourism. Nobody wanted to be tourism secretary Kerala. Nobody had heard of Kerala. Everybody used to go to Rajasthan or go to Kashmir. Kerala was unknown. Uh and they posted me as secretary tourism. The only destination known in Kerala at that point was Kovaleam Beach where one ITDC hotel existed and because they used to get cheap charter flights. Uh you know again illegal construction had come up. Yeah. uh it used there used to be a 20 pounds a night destination and uh I took that opportunity uh as secretary tourism to build Kerala as a tourism destination. So I became a startup secretary in many ways you know I uh said I’ll do uh things you know I’ll take Kerala back to its root I will um build Kerala on completely new products I’ll differentiate Kerala from the rest of the world and I went back uh to unique products and I actually closed the colum beach for a year to clean it up it had a lot of garbage filth I completely closed it today it’s so clean It’s I closed it up, cleaned it up but I in the meanwhile I developed the backwaters of Kerala. I developed the Kerala house board. It used to be the rice board of Kerala when which rice used to be transported. And all the carpenters that had stopped and so all the carpenters not a single nail is used on it. All the carpenters had gone away to Gulf. I brought them back. I developed the houseboat of Kerala. I brought back Ayurveda not as a massage or a therapy but as a regimen over over 20 days 15 days. So I just did it. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. And then I said that I’ll go back to the roots of Kerala. So Kurri Pet which is the mother of all martial art. We promoted and marketed. We went back. Nobody had heard of Kerala cuisine. So what you hear now fish moy stew uppam all we brought that center stage and we re repackaged the kerala art forms brought them center stage katakali moatum and uh to my mind uh you know it was important to de and kerala is one state where industry had miserably failed earlier we branded it as god’s own country correct and we said what’s the story of that so we said that It’s very different from any other destination. It it is truly God’s own country. And if you go into the backwaters, that’s the only place where within two and a half hours you can move from a beach to a backwater to a wildlife to the mountains to the tea states. No other destination provides you this opportunity. Uh so we and a very well-connected airport. Yeah. So you know very we had the Tandum airport, we developed the coin airport, we had the Calikat airport. So in a small strip of state you had three different airports but the important thing was that uh you know we started inviting leading editors and journalists from all over the world and we got the geographic national geographic editor to come in and he wrote a beautiful piece saying he put Kerala as one of the five exotic destinations in the world as one of the greatest uh exotic paradises of the world and he that Kerala is unique not because of its natural beauty but because of the high rate of literacy and uh the very high health standard. So when you compare when you look at the physical quality of life index, the human development index and uh superimpose the beauty of backwaters, the ayurvea uh the art forms, the cultural art form that makes it a unique experiential destination which the world has never seen and that is how we defined it as God’s own country. So it’s one thing to develop the the base the fundamentals of the tourism but it’s also another thing to brand it right because you also want these British American Europeans to come there and branding is really important I know you’ve spoken about branding so God’s own country and and putting almost as much time on branding as you’re doing on the fundamentals it’s an ideal business concept right so my belief is that u you know before I’d done this hana had been developed and hana was developed as a state product you guest houses by states etc. My belief was that uh tourism in the long run can flourish only as a private sector activity. So we allowed entrepreneurs to grow and flourish. So if you go into the resorts Kerala experience is unique because there are beautiful boutique resorts. What we did in the government is to provide the last mile connectivity. We developed the jetties. We ensured that there are good toilets. We ensured that there is worldclass branding and we build the brand of God’s own country. That was our job. But the rest of it as private sector enterprise running of resorts etc was all done by the private sector. So it was a great combination of private public partnership which made it happen. And then you know something interesting happened. uh you know I was in my third year as secretary tourism and then one fine day this in the state still yeah I was still in Kerala and one fine day I got a call that the principal secretary prime minister wants to talk to you so I was a young officer and actually I said why should the principal secretary to PM speak to me so Mr. Rajesh Mishtra was the principal he spoke to me and he said that the prime minister wants to have a holiday in Kerala and he don’t want to meet any politician any punch leader you will make his itary for about 8 days and you will look after him you’ll take care of him and the prime minister will spend 8 days uh and he came and he spent time in Kumaragam in the backwaters of Kerala this is Vaj Mr. Vaj came and uh these were his Kumaragam musings for 8 days I spent with him and I took him into the backwaters. I took him into uh Ayurveda. I took him into made him experience Kerala in his uh unique cultural art forms etc. And you know one day we had taken him to the backwaters and he saw the signages he experienced the backwaters he met uh the uh fisher woman the fisherman uh you know he had a great experience then he came back and you know over dinner he asked Mr. Bresh Mishra told him so Mr. turned to me and he said I said he said women and child welfare [laughter] so that was the end of the story but I applied one year 3 months later I was selected to go to finance ministry but when the file went to the prime minister he changed it uh and posted me in tourism. Then I landed up here and Mr. Jagbon was my minister. As soon as I landed up here, within government no within 20 days of that the twin tower blast in New York happened the uh war in Afghanistan started. There was attack on our parliament and there were travel advisories against India. Correct. And everybody you know the hotel years we had very few hotels then and they were performing to 10% occupancy and everyone said that we need tourists to come in we need tourists to come in and that was the time when Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore they were branding. No no no they were all they had all stopped their branding campaign. They all stopped it because there was a crisis much like the crisis you’re seeing in the Middle East now in the Gulf region. Similar kind of a crisis. And at the peak of that crisis uh hotelers were not getting tourists etc. It was absolute standstill. At the peak of that crisis we went to tour operators and said you sell packages in India. So they said sir there’s no consumer demand. To revive the consumer demand we launched the incredible India campaign and it was again a 360°ree campaign. First time anybody had gone digital we went to CNN uh BBC etc. And we built India as an incredible India and the demand for India grew and grew and grew and grew and it grew so much that there were no airports. So that’s how the new airports in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, T all these new airports were brought in because uh you needed new infrastructure for these um tourists to come in and that’s how really tourism took off. So I have a question on the bureaucracy. Yeah. Let’s go back to Kerala for a second. Yeah. So what kind of bureaucrats end up doing well versus the ones that don’t do as well? What are some of the characteristics of a successful bureaucrat that you’ve noticed over a period of time? So my view is that bureaucrats who do well first of all they have a clear vision that you need a vision that how you’re going to transform that sector. I mean when you leave that sector 3 years four years you must be very clear I’m going to define this sector with these outcomes. So have clear outcomes number one. Number two, and how many have that [clears throat] sir? Uh very few have that. Number two, uh I have this, uh bureaucrats who do well always think ahead of time. You know, that’s very important. So they use technology, they use cutting edge tools which are very important. Number three, I think the bureaucrats who do well have the capacity to build a good team. M they don’t work in solo but they build a good team particularly of young people I mean young people bring a lot of good idea fresh ideas so you need a team of good people to uh join you collaborate with you and fourthly uh the bureaucrats who do well are those who listen uh get a good feedback from the public and the public will then tell you that this road is dirty or this needs to be done or you need to focus more in education or health or whatever and they respond on that public feedback. So your interconnect with the public is very very important and critical. So four things have outcomes, build a good team, vision, have positivity, build a very very dynamic young team and always take feedbacks. So now you’ve worked with the prime prime minister bajpai, you worked with the congress government, you’ve worked with prime minister Modi for so long, right? in so many different capacities and you’ve grown and grown and grown. So, what have you learned about working with all of these people? How is it that you know you have such a great chemistry with everybody? Party this, party this, doesn’t matter. No, no. I I’ve had my downs. Don’t think that I’ve had only ups. You know, nobody in life should ever think that he’s going to keep going up and up and up and up and up. You’re going to have your downs and everybody whether it’s business or government or politics will have his down. The important thing is whether you will be able to write that down period and go on. Don’t ever lose your optimism. Don’t ever lose hope. Don’t ever lose positivity and think ahead. That’s important. You converted a punishment posting to a price posting to the extent that you now stuck with it for years. No, no, now the tourism posting is a price posting after that. So I think you know it’s important that uh the you’re bound to have a down but you should always think that you’re going to never lose your positivity and optimism never. So in those days when you were secretary tourism at the center I mean India grew as a destination for sure right we all saw it we all experienced it incredible India I think is not just used for tourism is used in daily parliament I think it’s become a daily word that we use right and so but since then do you think India’s done well as a tourist destination right now I was just checking that top 10 tourist destinations of Asia India’s potential is vast India hasn’t done well uh India needs to do much more in terms of creating great experiences. You have the greatest heritage sites in the world. You have the finest archaeological. Several things. One is your ability uh the your to package from the point of a tourist is critical from the point of arrival to the point of departure. Your visa arrival entry must be seamless. If we claim ourselves to be the technology leaders of the world, our entry points must be seamless. We still filling up too many forms for even for tourist visas, too many forms. Uh but my view is that it should all be uh digital. Uh my view is that uh the experience at uh heritage sites must be very unique. Uh my view is that we need to clean up our cities in terms of garbage uh filth etc. And lastly, my view is that uh we need to create many many more stories about uh our destinations. Storytelling is an art. Yeah. And that’s about branding. And lastly uh my view is that we need to spend much more on brand marketing of India. Uh because India’s in the process of buying about 1,600 planes. Planes. What are you going to do with it? No. 1,600 planes means that you’re going to have Indians flying out. You’ll have outbound tourism rather than inbound tourism. You need international tourists to come into India. It shouldn’t be that we end up creating markets for Singapore. We create markets for Europe or for America. We need Americans, Europeans and uh people from all over the world to come to India and experience the uniqueness of India. I like Goa versus Thailand, right? I mean, it’s so much easier sometimes I feel to go from the Bangkok airport to the Bangkok city than Goa airport to Goa city, right? So, how do you think about these small minor issues, these frictions? You know, one of the important thing is that tourism is a state subject and you need about uh uh 15 states of India to become champions of tourism. Much like Rajasthan is quite seamless once you get into Kashmir few destinations are there but you need to create many more in Kashmir. Uh Kerala is quite seamless. My view is that Madhya Pradesh is a great great tourism destination. Uh similarly, Karnatak is a great destination not is badly packaged and marketed. The politician spends all his time uh thinking that he’s going to do many other things but he doesn’t focus on tourism. We need to bring tourism center stage. It is the fastest way to create jobs. The greatest multiplier impact on jobs will come from tourism and foreign exchange. Yeah, exactly. I mean I think for for Thailand for for Saudi Arabia etc. Yeah the highest highest source the biggest source of foreign exchange is actually tourism. Absolutely right. And for us it’s not. So no other country has the kind of civilization, the kind of history, the kind of archaeological sites, the uniqueness of its uh richness in terms of uh uh civilizational aspects. Uh I mean you go to a place like Hampy, yeah, it’s unbelievable. Totally. It’s it’s a mind-boggling destination. But how many foreign tourists come there? So we need to promote and market it much more and much more effectively. You know I I went to Matura a couple months ago. Yeah. Right next to Delhi. Yeah. Uh and so there was so much local tourism there. Buses and buses coming. I think someone told me 10,000 buses an hour enter Matura. Right. There’s so much local tourism but internationally they’ve not been able to exploit. I think this so the rich high value tourism India must become a very very upmarket high value destination. uh India should be attracting tourists because people are looking for differentiation. The world has moved towards experiential destination. People want to experience a destination and there is no better experience than India in terms of history and civilization. We should be attracting tourists who are willing to pay you $2,500 a night. Yeah. Ex I mean Dubai is doing it. Macau I mean the city states which are doing such a great job. Uh I I got to know that Istanbul actually is the most visited city now in the world more than Paris and London. But Istanbul is history, it’s civilization, it’s experiences. So you need to build many more experiences. And apparently there are more fivestar keys in just Dubai than all of India. That’s right. That’s right. So I think that that ecosystem also we have Dubai builds about close to uh 35 big hotels every year. Yeah. So that’s what India needs to do. It needs to create that kind of infrastructure. It needs to improve urbanization. It needs to improve the quality of air. It needs to improve uh the roads and green them up and then and connect everything together, right? Like if you can 7day package. Yeah, it the state governments must take the lead in making it seamless. So do you think it being a state subject and not a central subject that’s that’s slightly an issue? Well, I think uh tourism essentially is India is too large a country. It’s bigger than 24 countries of Europe. So a center can’t do everything. Uh tourism is about good governance. We must understand this that if a state is well governed, you will attract tourism and therefore good governance is the key and more and more states must govern themselves better. And I think if the government just understands that this is such a great source of income, forget about everything else. I think what the politicians must understand they can’t they can’t rise up in their career without creating jobs. The fastest way to create jobs is tourism. Yeah. And I mean this is true for all the people who are watching do think about starting a business in tourism more than anything else. You know I think that’s something we completely ignore. Yeah. So so if I’m a 21-year-old right and I want to set up something in tourism a lot of people like that here. How do you suggest they start? I mean you’re addressing them now. No no no huge opportunities uh massive opportunity actually uh one of my class friends from St. Steven’s college actually became India’s finest guide you know he was a storyteller his art was he was an imagine this someone who passed out of economics honors in St. Stevens College became the finest guide. He was the most desired guide, the most uh expensive guide. Uh the world was rooting for him because he was a great story teller on India. Uh the another friend of mine who’s today the finest Buddhism Buddhist guide. So on the Buddhist circuit, he’s demanded by the wealthiest people from across the world. There there are close friends of mine who have set up unique boutique resorts, five rooms, six rooms. They’re they’re charging $1,500 a night, but they’ve created an an experience around it. They started with one one resort of five rooms. They’ve gone on to expand into 30 pro 30 resorts with uh you know five room, six rooms. Look at a great story like uh CG Earth. They’ve created experiences around Kerala. So you need to think out of the box and create great experiences and you don’t need huge capital. I mean you don’t have to create a hotel. That’s not the only way to get into tourism experiences, Airbnbs et yeah absolutely. So now let’s move on from tourism to nitiog. I think that was the next big phase of your life. Yeah. So first of all I feel nobody understands truly what the niti aayog is responsible for. The next phase of my life was as secretary industries where I did startup India. Startup India and ease of doing business. So let’s let’s talk about that. Start with that. How was that? You know, you worked with the prime minister very closely on that. How was that experience? Wonderful. It was very unique because uh you know the prime minister has just taken over as the prime minister and uh secretaries we’ve all making our presentation as pretty early and um uh you know I was amongst the first few secretaries and uh when he saw my presentation he said though I we were not industries was not looking after ease of doing business it was the finance ministry he said you take charge and you get responsible for you know India was 146th on the world hankies of doing business and he said you make India jump up. Yeah. So you brought it to 63 I believe in your Yeah. But to get to 63 I had to scrap a lot of rules, regulation, procedures, act. So the first year we said you digitized then uh EPFO and uh all of them they digitized but they kept the physical process on also the mindset was that you’ve digitized but the paperwork also must continue and actually India lost position rather than improve position because the World Bank said that you you have digitized but you’re making somebody the applicant do the same process again. So we had to really whip oursel against all of them to make it uh to remove the all paperwork and then to work with states to work with customs to work with income tax. I mean it was a rigorous nightmare but we improved within a period of 2 and 1/2 years. We made India jump up a lot of positions on ease of doing business. a huge jump and my view is that uh if the World Bank had continued with this uh ease of doing business, India would have continued to do very well. We brought in the GST because of that. We brought brought in the insolvency and bankruptcy code uh you know otherwise bankruptcy code would have never come. We brought in the real estate regulation act because of that and many many things happened in India. PM was determined that India must he’s basically a person who believes in free enterprise. So he believes in unleashing the vast potential of India through private sector and therefore India would greatly gained out of that. You were like a huge weapon in his arsenal to get this done and and so was it easy uh to you know I heard somewhere that 1,800 laws had to be scrapped essentially. No it was very tough. It was it it’s been one of the toughest things I’ve done because it’s not about doing yourself. [laughter] It’s about convincing everybody down the line. So if you’re trying to convince the custom guy, the below guy, the top guy, everybody in the hierarchy must understand that you and everybody’s mindset. Imagine for the last 65 years in your country, everybody has moved from a British Raj to a license Raj. So everybody’s grown up on leftism and everybody’s grown up on socialism and everybody’s grown on controls. That’s how they’ve been trained. That’s the mindset is controls. Now suddenly you say leave this control, leave this paperwork, leave this digitize, there should be no human intervention. It was very very tough. So from below to the top changing every it was a change of mindset. Increasingly uh the bureauc bureaucrats in India their mindset is getting changed that private sector must create wealth. Earlier it was that private sector is all thieves and chore essentially that was a mindset. That’s I think that’s completely changed. Startup India I think you’ve literally made uh starting a company now uh something that people actually look forward to. Earlier it was completely bastile. So you know startup India actually I went to the prime minister and he made me do this presentation again and again. He’s quite a perfectionist in that way. So he made me do three four rounds and then he said uh uh you know there were factory laws applying to startups. There were labor laws. We had just 156 startups. Today we have a 170,000 startup start startups. So all we through a process we eliminated all the factory laws all the labor laws otherwise inspectors would have gone on every startup’s office and home. So we eliminated all that that was necessary and that is why we had to do a special definition of startups. India had to do that because India’s you know I mean when you talk to somebody from Silicon Valley he doesn’t understand that there was a lot of constraint because of existing laws and we had to eliminate all of them to be able to do that and that’s how the startup movement grew but the great thing was that the startup India movement grew and when we did the startup India launch uh we had uh you know some of the finest entrepreneurs from across the world here who had done some unique work but uh the you know the startup India also converged with this uniqueness of digital India that everybody had a digital identity. Uh you know you had 550 million bank accounts. Uh you had uh you know the mobile number and the digital identity had been integrated with the bank account. So you had fast payment booming and had that not happened PTM wouldn’t have happened. Razer pay wouldn’t have happened. Zomato wouldn’t have happened. Ola wouldn’t happen. So what happened as a consequence of that that you had uh you know phone pay started competing with Google paym start started competing with PayPal or Amazon and pay in the marketplace but you had another set of startups moiquake pine labs etc who started doing credit on the payment history and then you had another set of startups zeroda grow upstock all of them took stock market to tie two entire three cities and then you add another set of startups uh go digit echo insurance insurance so you are today doing insurance credit stock market fast payment all within 30 seconds fixed deposits yeah 30 seconds to 1 minute transactions and fastest in the world yeah when I was in Kerala I took my insurance policy it used to take me 9 months of paperwork we do it in less than a minute now so this is a different generation altogether I India is also now exporting its UPI technology etc. I’m very excited. I saw a huge billboard in Dubai when I landed that UPI is now available in UAE. No, even in uh Paris or in France, in Singapore, many many places from where you can do instantaneous debit credit. So I honestly feel had this movement not been started in 2014 by yourself and the prime minister, I doubt all of what we are doing today, all of Shark Tank and startups and everything that we speak about would have happened even 10%. Yeah. Yeah. No, because the ecosystem was built up and then you know the other thing that happened was that we created the fund of fund. Yeah. And that was privately managed. So you know VCs and alternative investment funds could do their due diligence in select startups but risk sharing was done by the fund of funds. So my view on that is that for deep tech really to take off in India. Now we need fund of funds which would then share the risks with venture funds in a much bigger sovereign funds that other countries have. Absolutely. Which is what uh this one lakh k research fund will now do provide much more resources for deep tech fund. So you know many unique things are happening in India. I mean we using technology to leaprog. So India has done the AI mission uh it’s provided you know it’s opened up its data through AI kosh for its uh young startup APIs are available yeah it’s uh providing you know what is required you require data uh you have talent in India you are opening you’re providing computing power to your students at uh low costs much lower cost than United States so Europe. So if you’re able to provide computing power and if you’re able to open up data, you’ll have Indian star. Look at Serum. I mean they’ve made it multilingual. Uh in India, you need multilingual models. You need low bandwidth models. Uh you know to make AI really serve the purpose of improving learning outcomes, health outcomes and that is what is happening. Or look at Bhashni. I mean you are able to do a voice over fill up government forms get access to government schemes uh that is what is required in India totally so so now now we let’s move to nitayog so tell us just for the lay man here what what is the responsibility of niti aayog uh so uh you know nitiog uh was a new institution set up by this government is very distinct from the planning commission of the earlier years and planning commission used to uh provide financial outlays to ministries and to state governments etc. That was like a controlled economy. So when this government came in [gasps] it did away with the planning commission and it said there’s no need to get into this financial outlays but Niti was a think tank of the government. So what Nitiayo did was to look at progressive things you know which the ministries are quite in day-to-day working you need somebody to think and plan way ahead so amongst the many things it did for instance it did the utter innovation mission which supported tinkering labs [snorts] it supported incubation centers it did the aspirational districts program for about 115 of the most backward districts of India looking at outcomes And it said that it made 115 districts compete on outcomes. And it said that the results are here. So every politician, every collector should know whether his district during that period has it moved up or has it moved down. You’re creating competition. So you are naming and shaming that district in terms of performing. Yeah. So I mean people will vote for those politicians who will do well or the government will post those officers who will uh you know so prime minister put a lot of stake in that aspirational district like every district is a has a stock ticker of its own essentially exactly so it was all done on real time data now that real time data was not available when I was a collector you know data used to come in later but now in India you get data on a real time basis and you can actually use that data to create competition you can put it out so it’s a very different India you know what is physically not possible is possible now you can use AI machine learning to take tests of millions and millions of students today you can take the attendance of teachers if you want or you want to take put the tests on a daily basis through AI you will put them out in public domain every student will know whether he’s improving that was all not possible earlier you know The department of statistics data used to come after 5 years, 6 years after you’ve left. You don’t know whether I worked very hard on education and health. I didn’t know whether my district had moved up or gone down. But now real time you can find out. So it’s all your students actually on a minute-to-minute basis will be able to know whether India is going up or coming down. So what was your favorite part about working at Anita Yog? What do you remember? What’s the most cherished memory? Well, my cherished memory was that I was able to bring in a lot of young blood. So, I brought in uh close to 500 young professionals in NITO. I said, I’m going to make it very different from any ministry. And these young people brought in a lot of energy, vibrancy, dynamism, but I I think I pushed a lot of uh new areas of growth. For instance, uh you know, I push for electric mobility in a very big way uh in the country and I push for green hydrogen because I believe that India’s growth must be uh in a very there’s a huge opportunity for India to technologically leaprog much like we’ve done with digital public infrastructure. We should do it in uh for sustainability through green hydrogen. we should do it. Uh you know while the rest of the world I mean uh United States still talking about refinery India’s strength is not in fossil fuel. You don’t have fossil fuel. You import about 185 billion worth of fossil fuel. You your the solar is Indian. The energy the sun energy is Indian. The wind condition is Indian. You should use solar and wind to become the champion of clean energy. And you should be able to then use renewable which is what we are doing. We are already doing 260 gawatt. Then you crack water to produce green hydrogen and become the cheapest producer of green hydrogen for the world. You can become the cheapest producer of ammonia in its liquid form to the rest of the world. You can become the biggest manufacturer of electrolyer. You can I mean you 75% of the vehicles in India are two wheelers, three wheelers. We must target that by 2030 all two wheelers, three-wheers must be electric. That’s how you’ll transform India. You should technologically leave frog. Yeah. Yeah. We had shin Katkaris here a couple weeks ago and he mentioned something very similar and green. I think he’s also very passionate about he’s very passionate about ethanol also. Ethanol. [laughter] So we had a debate on that. Yeah. Um sir you know talking about looking to the future you know there are some things we have to concede that China did better. I was there last year and honestly the story there is is moving a lot faster than India’s. What can we learn from that country uh for all its negatives political issues etc. Whereas there is strength. Uh so two things we must learn from China. One is the size and scale of whatever we do. Just forget doing pilots. India should never do pilots. Put into the mind of your students that they are to be global players. Startups is not about doing pilots. Startup is about competing in the world. Whatever you do, compete in the world and become the best in the world and become a global champion. That’s the first thing all your students must learn. They are here to compete in the world. The earning you will get from exports is 10x of what you will get in the domestic market. It’s not the domestic market, it’s the global market against which you are competing. So the size and scale and the size and scale will come from cost competitiveness. Once you get the size and scale, you will bring down the cost and therefore cost competitiveness is important. And what we learn from China today is size and scale, cost competitiveness. Number two, we are in the beginning of our urbanization phase. There’s a lot to learn from China on urbanization. Whatever we do in India, drainage, sewage, solid waste, all this new construction with creating forests around these buildings, we must do the world’s best. We have to do better than China in all these areas. Leon you created Singapore you know somebody asked congratulated him on creating Singapore he said don’t give me any credit he said everything in the world has already been done all that I did was I looked at the best examples in the world and I did them 15% better I did 15% better on what they had already done I picked up the best practices in the world so everything in the world there’s nothing which has not been done pick up the best do 15% better you’ll create a completely better India. There’s something to be said about investment in education right our entire higher education budget the government is I believe 55,000 crores that comes down to what 6 billion $6 billion essentially so 6 billion was the budget of UPUP where I went of one university that’s how they they that’s how much they spend now if you don’t spend on education on don’t spend on research funding grants this is where you know Chad GPD and LLMs and all they came from the funding the government put into these universities in the US. So, so while it’s great to have that vision that we want to cross China and we have to do all of these things, what does a 21-year-old or a 17year-old sitting here, they’ll tell us, they’ll tell me, they’ll tell you, sir, we don’t have the kind of funds that these counterparts of ours in China and the US do. Cost competitiveness, sure, maybe we can be 30% cheaper, 60% cheaper. We can’t be 99% cheaper. How do I defend this point to them? Two things. One is greater outlay is necessary. I agree with you. But greater outlay is cannot be the only reason for success. You must understand that in India we must learn to deliver results. You can provide any amount of outlay. I can give you schemes and schemes and schemes where government has provided the outlay and those schemes have failed. M the important thing is good governance. Whatever money you are providing to education, do you think are we delivering on that amount allocation? Don’t you think we should improve our learning outcomes? Don’t you think we should improve our health outcomes? And why you looking at only the outlay of the central government? Why you not looking at the outlays of the state governments? Huge amount of resources are being put in. Why is it that our learning outcomes are low? Why is it that our health outcomes are low? Why is it that the class 10th student is not able to grasp you know science and maths and history of class fourth? So it’s funds are important but they are not absolute. What you need is delivery. What you need is passion. What you need is commitment. What you need is good governance. And it’s important that the same resources must deliver you 100 times more. Yeah. Good. So, so it’s very important that people like you, how did you build this university? You didn’t put money. You took the land on lease. You’ve created a university where startups flourish. You gave them practical methods. And similarly, we must learn the art of delivering 10x more with the money that we are putting in. No, that’s a great point sir actually because our vision here is to become a global top 10 ranked university and India doesn’t feature in top 10, top 50, top 100 even, right? And we believe we’re going to do it spending 100th of the money and that’s that’s possible I guess everywhere else. No, no. So India gives you the size and scale of population. There are huge advantages and India must learn to better govern. The delivery must improve. Why I’m saying this is that India is still growing at rates of 7 and a half 8% on just 50% of its population. Yeah. The rest 50 is not just 50 46% of wage earners in agriculture. Then you have people living on Mandrea. The government’s attempt is that this 50% must become from passive players into active players in economy. And therefore it’s very important that these active players will drive India’s growth story. So the best of India is still to come. But that would all require good governance. And to my mind it’s not money it’s better implementation better outcomes we need to you know if you talk only about money then they’ll say I’ve utilized this money at the end of the financial year it’ll be just financial what’s the outcome you’ve achieved what’s the multiplier impact of that work against outcomes outcomes outcomes and delivery delivery delivery define your outcome and achieve them then you’ll get a a result. So governance on the parameters of outcomes. Absolutely. India must become outcome oriented. We are today financial. Have we spent the money? Yes, we’ve spent the money. But what is the delivery? You’re saying even that 55,000 crores is not being productively used. So first use that properly and then we can think about you can have 100 100x multiplier impact of that. No, honestly sir, in the US I see money getting wasted in healthare. Yeah, for example, the processes there, the systems there, they there are there’s so many leakages even in education. I mean, US has a $1 trillion investment in education every year. That’s their budget size. But I see it getting wasted day in and day out on on stupid compliances that make no sense. So my view is that, you know, we should not replicate the model of uh we should become a far more innovative society. We should become a far more dynamic society. But don’t expect government to do everything. Indian Indian society must be driven by the private sector. Government should act as a facilitator as a good catalyst. And so you know you mentioned in one of your speeches that you know South Korea, Japan, they all grew in a post World War II era where things are very stable, right? Where you had the United Nations actually playing a role. And today we are living in an era of protectionism. You have Trump doing his stuff. You have Russia doing its own stuff, right? Uh you had Brexit, right? So the world has also sort of changed completely. Oh, it’s it’s totally radically changed because um you know when Japan was growing post World War II or Korea grew it in ’ 70s and ‘9s or in recent times, China’s scorching pace of growth of three decades, all this happened in when there was relative peace and stability in the world. uh the global value chains were growing, supply chains were growing. You could import and export and China could export to the rest of the world. What is happening today? You have conflict in Europe, you have conflict in Middle East, you conflict on Iran. So you you’re in the heart of conflicts. The institutions which enabled the period of stability, United Nations, Security Council, now world they all world trade organization later which enabled free all that outlived their utility. They did not grow with times and then global supply chains are totally broken with Trumpian tariffs all around. So the you move from global value chains to trusted relationships and to bilateral and regional trade agreements is we are living in a very different world. But having said that let me also tell you to your viewers and to these young students that they are very very very fortunate. They’re very fortunate. They’re living in an era which is going to be the biggest era of the rise of productivity. you know machine learning, AI, data will make it the biggest error of productivity and it’s for them to utilize this opportunity to make India grow that you’ll never have this error again. This is an era which will be transformational in innovation in medical research in pharmacy in pharmaceutical research in bioimilars. I mean the data will what was not possible earlier will happen now and I think AI will be transformational. It’s a generalpurpose technology which will change the world in a much bigger way than uh you know industrialization did uh much bigger way than electricity did much bigger way than information technology did and to the knowledge economy not just the yeah so it’ll be transformational already so I mean we have students single individuals who are uh running companies now uh which are doing revenues and they’re single employee and they have a bunch of agents doing everything else. I think we are only a few months away where we’ll find our first unicorn which is a single employee unicorn and then you can literally automate now everything. Talk about mindsets for a second if you can. Right. We we’ve had this colonial hangover of a of a servitude mindset a little bit as a country and it’s it’s now coming we’re coming out of it. How do we bring this entrepreneurial mindset, you know, this job creator mindset, this builder mindset? Uh that’s a question that I deal with every day. How do I push my students away from placements and towards entrepreneurship? What are some of the ideas there? Anything that that you have reflected? You know, I mean, if I was living in uh today’s world, I wouldn’t have ever sat for the services. I would have done my own startup, you know. So my my view is that uh uh you know uh the people who are going to be legends of the future are those who are going to disrupt the world in terms of I mean look at look at all the guys who are making it big today. uh from Elon Musk or uh uh you know Sam Altman or to uh anthropic founder Modi and all these guys they are legendary because at a very young age they’ve been able to do transformational work in each one of those areas and to my mind uh it’s these kind of people who are should be the role model that at the a you know whatever difference you have to make to the world you should be able to make that diff difference to the world before you touch the age 30 30 30 [laughter] I was 40 40 is too late 40 is just too late so you know by the age of 30 you should be totally transformational for the world and for India no very clear sir um now sir I want to talk about the book that’s come up and I would love to invite your co-author yeah please uh and sad how did you come across sir he just mentioned something about uh bringing 500 odd young people in NITO and let’s just say I was one of them so [laughter] so that is how I came across Ross Mr. Kant and this intensity I’ve been witnessing it for 6 years now. So I think in that sense I’ve been very fortunate that I got the opportunity to work under the very best you know I came back from the UK just so that I could work here at NITI Aayog and you know with sir because I was totally inspired by his vision of transforming India because that was just a year into him having taken over as coayog and even completing my masters at the London school of economics I was like here’s a place that I need to be and I very vividly recall my interview with sir as well. What was it like? No, it was it was literally like a it was literally like a rapid fire 5minute interview. What have you done? What do you want? Why do you come back? And then he was like, “Okay, fine.” And I thought, well, with the 5-minute interview, I’m never going to get in until I got my call afterwards. But that’s when I realized that the the that you’ve converted. Yeah. Yeah. I have. So, but yeah, very uh very incredibly fortunate uh to have worked those six years. Tell us a story from those six years. Well, those six years were I think the most incredible years of my I mean, I’ve seen what sir tried to do in terms of building Niti yoga as an institution in having so many different verticals. Literally our morning and I was telling this to somebody just the other day, you know, in in a in a 12-hour day. I mean, our days were far with sir who’s always working. It’s probably 14 hours, but your mornings would start with aspirational districts. You know, a couple of hours later, you’re talking about drone policies. A few years later, you a few hours later, you’re talking about geospatial stuff. By 2 p.m., you’ve transitioned into green metals. By 4 p.m., it’s probably green ammonia. By 6 p.m., it’s electric vehicles. by 7 p.m. it’s probably some meeting that’s coming over. Uh so in so essentially it’s like you’re be you’re just thrown into the river and then you’ve got to swim to survive. But I think that’s the very best uh way to actually learn and I’m sure all of your students here that’s exactly what what they’re trying to figure out as well. but really fast-paced environment uh being in the midst of some of the most transformative initiatives uh you know that that sir had given us the opportunity to get involved with and then u and then again after that the G20 of course which was which was again um again incredibly lucky to have gone there because probably the the next I mean sir just mentioned everybody should do it before 30 so luckily I I started working with sir when I was 25 but if uh if let’s say I hadn’t joined the G20 the next time India would have gotten G20 presidency I would have probably been you know 50 years old so And so did not end up missing those two ballparks but really um I would say that some of the people who worked in NITO during that phase have witnessed India’s incredible transformation and that sort of stays with you. Um but other than that something sir also is that he’s he’s an incredible mentor to have. Uh he would uh he would push you to the limits but in a good way because I think that’s the best way to learn but on the inside he’s also deeply caring and in NIT and I’m sure all of you have seen the make in India the the share uh and so sir is fondly called tiger by the way within government. So that’s that’s the that’s the other thing. Yeah but incredible years. Awesome. and tell us about this book. Uh you know uh give us a short gist of why first of all you thought about going down this road. I think uh sir when sir and I had first had a discussion about this book I think serve just as you rightly mentioned that you know right now they’re witnessing an incredible you know era of productivity that is because think of AI which is taking the world by storm but what’s equally taking the world by storm is climate change itself. Now where these two storms collide what what happens that that nexus and rather than thinking of it as something negative can you really convert it into something positive uh you know and how do you how do you sort of make that positive is what this book is essentially about how do you transform vicious cycles into virtuous ones how do you convert threat multipliers into force multipliers because think about it right today uh people I mean I’m sure a lot of you travel by flight you travel by flight yourself if you would have noticed the instances of turbulence in flights have increased and is that is that a that is actually because of climate change. So what we don’t realize is we we’re used to the version of climate change where we’ve seen you know a lone polar bear on a floating chunk of ice you know somewhere in the Arctic and Antarctic you’ve seen exactly right but today it’s right you know besides it’s right around you you know you’ve witnessed the turbulence in planes the same thing goes for world war 1 and two you’ve seen it as those grainy black and white footages in your history textbooks today you’ve see so many wars around you whether it’s Ukraine Russia whether it’s what’s happening in Iran right now or otherwise so so we we witnessing all of what we had dread about who people read about black death. Who thought you we would all live through a pandemic, right? So, so the the the challenge with climate change is that we think of it as only something that causes destruction to human lives, etc. But it even affects technology. Um, in during the heat waves in London, Oracle and Google data centers got knocked offline. And today, can you imagine a world without AI? Your chat GPDs of the world will get stuck if your data centers get knocked out. So, AI currently consumes more energy than than Japan and some of the countries, right? uh I heard in one of your speeches sir. So so it definitely is a energy guzzler and for India we have to move we are still on coal 80 85%. We have to move into solar if this has to be done sustainably. So do you think we are on the right track or do we need a complete you know shift in the strategy? No we on the right track because India is the only country which is about uh close to about uh 50% of its uh energy of non-fossil fuel. Now we have over 260 gawatt. Uh our target is about 500 gawatt. My view is that we should try and exceed that to about 700 gawatt. But then renewable energy is not adequate. important thing is that you still have a lot of potential of wind energy offshore energy wind uh we should be able to push that to its limit and because that’s all Indian this offshore wind is Indian India’s climatically blessed native Indian yeah India’s climatically blessed no other country has those climatic conditions like India has flat land yeah and so you should you have to cut down what the present Gulf crisis shows is that you should cut down on your fossil fuel import. Use the strength of your sun, use the strength of your wind to produce non-fossil fuel energy and then to be able to make it 24 into 7 build up storage either through battery storage or pump storage and pump storage has a longer life. So you need to do that but more important than that you’re getting so much of data centers in India. So you’ll need to strengthen your transmission your grid. You need to be a Today what is happening is you’re producing renewable in Gujarat and Rajasthan. You’re not able to lift it because of transmission lines. So you need to upgrade that. You need to bring in AI into the management of transmission. You need to bring AI into cooling systems etc. Now so AI can be transformational while AI is a guzzler. AI when driven with renewable energy with wind and using the power of AI to manage many of the climatic conditions you can it can be transformational for the world. So is there any country that you think is doing a good job at this right now? Well that we can look as a model. Well there are several uh countries which is uh which have you know I mean the important thing is that several companies are doing innovative work in terms of their data centers. uh but as a country I think India should be the leader in the world. India has the advantage of having one grid across the country. No other country has one grid. Europe doesn’t have it. United States doesn’t have it. You have one grid. You need to smarten it up. India has the climatic conditions. You’ve already done 260 gawatt of renewable energy. But last year we did 50 gawatt. You know how much did China did? 350 gawatt of renewable. So we seven times US. Yeah. So we should just champion that. We should become the biggest champion of renewable energy. We should become the biggest champion of battery storage. Is is the intent and the strategy there? Yeah, intent is that is that is absolutely that is in place right? Everything is our strategy is very clear. We put out auctions, we get the private sector and important thing is that India has been able to do it through the private enterprise and the private enterprise has been able to attract private equity from across the world. So all these new companies which have grown, green core, renew etc is all on private equity. Yeah. So that’s a great story for India. What India has achieved is remarkable. No, I think the India story is being told around the world. Well, you know, small microcosm in my city, um, you know, we had net metering. Yeah. Uh, until a couple years ago and suddenly they stopped net metering. Yeah. Uh, and I’m like that’s that’s taking two steps ahead and then three steps backwards. So, you know, I mean, one of the good thing that happened PM has pushed this uh solar rooftop suryagar scheme. uh that’ll in you know I mean it’s important that while we do renewables we also run our houses on solar rooftops and solar rooftop will push for net metering because whatever excess you produce have to be has to be bought over by the by the by the discom has to pay for that or bank it and give it back to the consumer when he needs it that’s important so I think what the surya scheme will do is to build up this uh ability to do net metering around India that’s important. Yeah. But sometimes it just feels that while while the the macro strategies in place the vision is there sometimes as it translates down in some in some states it just sort of pushes you back. Yeah. U on that note u how should one read this book right I’m going to make this a required reading in some of our courses. So read it like a story book because it it has uh uh characters is it has protagonists in this and it has uh it it it’s a simple read. It’s not a technical book. It’s it’s a book for young pe it’s a book for common person. Uh read it almost like a story book around you both from the perspective of climate and from the perspective of artificial. Do I have to be a climate entrepreneur or or someone in the industry to read this to be to make sense of this? But once you finished reading the book, I’m absolutely sure that you’ll become a startup entrepreneur in climate or both in climate and in AI. Yeah. I think the beauty of the book is like like sir said that uh it it it’s a book for the people and it’s a book of the people in the sense that there are characters that reflect lived realities. So as you read through that you know there there are three four wonderful characters in this book. Asha who’s a girl from the global south, Sophie who’s a girl from the global north and then there is you know there is a young uh you know sort of techie who works along with the mayor of his town to figure out how you can champion the AI climate nexus. I normally don’t reveal this but maybe it had something to do with uh uh with with this equation as well. So I’ve tried to mirror it mirror that in the book itself. uh but you can read the book as a whole but you could equally just pick up any chapter uh you know and just and just start reading that uh directly instead if there’s if let’s say you’re interested in green data centers um you can pick up the chapter on green data centers and you can read it directly and I think the beauty is that some story book and a textbook almost some of the use cases there including the three chapters which go into the use cases of AI for climate resilience mitigation and adaptation and those are some of the most unique use cases that you will find from across the world right from how let’s say you know when I was at Google I was fortunate that you know I ended up we ended up creating working with my team we created a solution where well air quality like you know the challenge is that uh you know you don’t have enough air quality monitoring stations or they’re very expensive to deal with we ended up funding two local startups who went and installed these air quality sensors on buses now because buses make thousands of rounds of the city you’ve got thousands of data points that are coming in in real time but the beauty is that and that’s the beauty of AI that you can then sort of impose this with you know weather wind direction etc and you can get a hyper local air quality level you know for the entire country. So today if you go to Google maps and if you click the layer and you’ll see an air quality layer for India which is very unique to India which is running because of that. But the same thing you can also realize for instance your students let’s say if somebody wants to work on source aortionment for let’s say emissions from power plant the same use case can actually be extended to figure out what are the emissions from the nearby power plants that are coming. I I’ll give you one problem statement. We have a climate u elective that we teach here and guess if they have 60 seats in that elective how many fill up 120 about 20 right so it’s still not something that people see value in for some reason right it fails me but how do I now push this topic push this conversation was made compulsory when I was in school right and I’ve grown up knowing at least what veiling is and what greenhouse gases are and etc etc. It’s at least given me a little bit of sensitivity. So if you want uh those uh 20 to go up to 200 combine artificial intelligence with [laughter] climate and you’ll have a yeah converge both together. Yeah. And suddenly you’ll have the whole world joining you because they’ll get a great idea on sustainability which will be critical and let me tell you sustainability is going to get back into the most trendy subject and the most fashionable subject. uh 3 years down the line, 2 years, 2 and a half years down the line. Even in India, I mean, it’s always a conversation in in Europe. In Europe, but Trump has taken it a backseat, but two two and a half years down the line, it’ll be the most critical thing in the world again. And AI is very important right now, but for AI to make an impact, it’s very important that we get this all of this taken care of. Got it. Sustainability is going to be critical. And therefore this uh convergence of AI with climate uh is very very important and uh how to do AI which is the most transformative force in the world but to do it in a sustainable manner and how the power of AI can be leveraged to ensure that we are living in a more sustainable world of tomorrow is very critical. I just say of course besides what Mr. Khan said I think the interesting thing here is what powers AI right compute where does compute reside data centers today you’re reaching a situation where green energy is cheaper than conventional energy what is essentially the cost of a data center it’s essentially predominantly energy and cooling so if you’ve got youngsters over here who are building AI models and they want to actually sit down and market those whether they want to tokenize them or whether it’s GPU per hour can you do it without green energy which is cheaper than conventional energy today so that is the kind of ideas you need to put out there tourism as a sector For startups, we have to think about you don’t need a million dollars to start not at all a guide business or an experiences business in any part of the country and you can do it anywhere especially in smaller cities I believe and start with your own house but then create a business model for that entire colony colony exactly and then spread it over. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to your landlords, talk to the owner of the apartment building and everybody wants to cut down on energy costs. That’s important. So that is the key. How do you how do you generate renewable? How do you store it? How do you earn money out of it? Create a business model out of it. Starting from your own house, you can take it to the entire colony where you live. I mean from the civil engineering to the batteries to the actual solar panel it has to be I mean right now do we import our solar panels or do we build them now ourselves? We building now but we import a lot lot of solar panels. We started manufacturing now but we are so you know I mean some of these sectors are very critical as you go in for electric vehicles you’re an importer of battery I mean we must understand this that 90% of the batteries in the world are being supplied by China 78% of the solar panels are being supplied by China 65% of the wind is being supplied by China so if China is a major major supplier uh it’s important for us to do manufacturing in these sectors. But but it’s also important to understand that it’s not the critical mineral which is important but the processing technology of the critical mineral is very important and therefore in the years to come our ability to do processing of critical critical minerals are available in plenty in the world. Nickel is available, lithium is available, cobalt is available but the processing technology of that is unavailable. China maybe students right no the Chinese students have been transformational because they were they are the ones who got into all cutting edge areas of growth they enabled China to do the technological leaprogging it’s all young students when you go and meet them in and therefore uh these students sitting here are going to be the ones who will transform India in the coming years No, absolutely guys you have to think about energy as a sector. We don’t talk so I think we are also at fault because we don’t talk about it enough at masters union right we I think focus so much on D2C and cloud kitchens and brands and consumer products we we completely ignore deep tech and my my view is that if India is to leaprog in the coming years uh we’ve we’ve done the digital technology bit you know we’ve benefited from digital public infrastructure the next big leaprogging has to happen in deep tech sectors. Uh it has to be in areas of energy. It is very very critical because you know you can’t remain an importer of critical minerals. You can’t remain a importer of fossil fuel. You can’t be dependent on one country. The world can’t be dependent on one country uh for many of these areas. Another push back I get from students when I try to push them in this direction is that Pratam you need so much capital to do any of these businesses right and here you know in India while private equity is there and you can get a $100 million investment but to get that first $100,000 investment that’s where the true gap is I’m seeing so many nodding heads now right suddenly uh what do I tell them right why how do they find that capital I know capital is not the only thing but for what we are speaking in terms of deep tech and climate I think tourism I understand you don’t need too much investment you can get started but with these two sectors how do we do the first 0 to1 so my my suggestion is that uh once you’ve created a business model out of them uh you should there are many many uh funders available today there are many family houses one of the great thing that’s happening in India today is that uh large company, family uh houses today have started supporting startups. Uh I mean I’ve been saying that actually Indian pension funds, insurance companies all should support startups. Uh Indian startups should not be dependent on foreign capital. They should be dependent on inial capital. But that started to happen and a number of startups will with great business model, great ideas will get supported. Look at look at family business houses guys. Um I think people have started converting their co gold into startup investments a little bit. Awesome. So we’ll open it up to Q&A with the audience. All right. Because we are short on time. So we’ll start with you. I come from Maharashtra and I’ve been working with farmers ever since I was like 7 years old. Just uh like going with my dad. He serves there as a deputy collector. And what we could realize is that Maharashtra has immense potential in agro tourism. That is one. And second is about carbon credits. I am being backed by 50,000 plus farmers out of which when I visited their land 10,000 plus farmers have the ability to create insane quality carbon credits right out of which around 5 to 7,000 are ready for a collateral um say a deal kind of a thing for which we can deal with them for carbon credit purpose but where I lack is that I need proper mentorship in order to understand how do I trade those carbon credits and make it a convert it into a sustainable business model for that I need to understand how like uh how do we export those carbon credits or how do we make a kind of blockchain technology otherwise which we can deal through it. So could you please help me understand that part? So what I’ll do is I’ll get the best expert in this field to come and interact with all of you on carbon credit. [laughter] Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. So uh there’s a lady called Maara who works on worked for many years on carbon credit. She worked with me on transport on procuring lot lot of uh uh you know buses when we were pulling in the demand. Uh she’s an expert on carbon credit and my suggestion to you is that I’ll get her to take a class with all those interested in the field of carbon credit. But what you’re telling me is a great idea because Maharashtra is a great place where you know in places like Nasi etc a lot of uh actually tourism is taken off farm tourism is taken off. What is farm tourism? Sorry. So, so there are two things actually farm tourism. So if we take consideration J if I’m he’s here right he’s from Nashik and Nashik has become the herb of exports of good quality material like let’s say vegetables and fruits and everything and wine yeah and wine [laughter] newly so like Maharasha has immense potential of agriurism because it has the highest number of farmers who are actually into farmlands right agree exports or tourism all these places have uh you know for farmers to become wealthy uh And to raise their per capita earning, it’s very important to move into value added agriculture. That is they need to get into floriculture, horiculture, dairy, uh they get into uh making wine and also promoting their region as a great experience for tourism. So many of these areas are also promoting I mean great great high value added uh tourism by going and living in the farm area. Such a great I learned something new from my students. That’s awesome. So there is one more thing may I continue? Thank you. So I am in talks with few of the deputy collectors and collectors from Maharashtra especially from Maratwa region. So Nashik has done an extremely amazing job at developing a ecosystem where they have connected farmers and entrepreneurs with export hubs right but second big opportunity that we can see is most of the people are extremely excited to visiting or I would rather say exploring how this organic food world works. So this opportunity which I can recognize is a ecosystem or a plan that we can build around this organic agricultural agurism part again for which I lack mentorship in understanding how do we develop that ecosystem because we have the resources we have the people we have the investments but planning that out is somewhere we are lacking in. So could you please guide me? My suggestion on that is that there are a number of people who are today entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs who are actually doing organic farming and are very successful you know. So we can give you a list of five top class young entrepreneur who are successful in terms of creating the the distribution retail network and who are supplying to both five-star hotels and they’re supplying to all top retail outlets. maintaining the quality and consistency of their product and what you should do is to really look at their example and see how they became successful so that you can replicate that model. Thank you very much sir. Just just on that note, one more thing I’d say because you mentioned carbon credits. Uh to all over here, I’d strongly encourage you to go look up the India energy stack which is still being worked upon, but if you actually are able to create startup ideas around India energy stack, I think you will build some of the most successful startups. Uh what is the what is the India energy stack? Well, it’s it’s like India’s digital public infrastructure for energy. Just as you created the UPI as a payments backbone, you’re doing something similar with the energy ecosystem as well where today it will enable a farmer sitting in let’s say the Maratada region to be able to trade energy with let’s say a seammens or a Reliance and that’s one part of it. The second part of it is on the distribution side because um as Mr. Kant also spoke about with so many data centers you mentioned their giant guzzlers you would also need to stabilize the grid right you need to stabilize the energy grid. So this energy stack will actually democratize all the data related to India’s grid whether it’s transmission whether it’s distribution where is being used how much is being invested all of those data points in front of you and exactly those data points are where you can sort of innovate just as the zerodas and the digs and echoes were built on top of the payment all the meters are being digitized basically and so that’s one part of it yeah but but everything else right from your transformers to uh you know the relays that are installed in substations everything got good afternoon sir Um I actually had a question written for you but I would like to pick up something that you mentioned on about meters and how they might not be um you know part of the entire ecosystem because of elections just a reference from a movie. Okay. So in interstellar people decided to think about the future decades into the future rather than focusing on today’s problems which was the crops. In that scenario when you were focusing on larger reforms uh how were you able to shift the mindset from short-term goals to a long-term national bet? So you know what was our vision? Our vision was uh or let’s look at our vision now. Our vision now is to take India from a 4 trillion to a 30 plus trillion dollar economy. That’s what the vision was the prime minister has laid before the country. Vixed barat is what 30 plus trillion dollar economy. The large large picture is what that you have to take your GDP 8x bigger. Your per capita income 9x bigger your manufacturing has to be 16x bigger. But for 16x bigger, you need millions and millions of young entrepreneurs. That can’t be done by uh existing companies. You need disruption, you know, and disruption happens only with young startups because the established companies become all status quoist. They all are status quoist. without disruption coming from startups, India can never be transformational and India can never match up uh to the kind of technological transformation that is taking place in the world. The part of the reason why we didn’t become a manufacturing nation is because we were not technology focused and we were not riding the wave of new technology. For the first time we’ve gone into semiconductors. For the first time we are doing the AI mission. For the first time we are doing the quantum computing mission. For the first time we are doing the semiconductor mission. For the first time we are talking about uh green hydrogen. All these are critical areas. Each one of them open ups opens up vast opportunities for you. So small steps small successful young entrepreneurs will make the difference to India becoming a 30 plus trillion dollar economy. I I would like to talk about the aspirational district project. So like there were 112 districts which underprivileged districts which were uh selected and they were um uh like realtime data which they were tracked upon and I I learned that there were 49 KPIs on which they were ranked. So we know about the KPIs for different corporates, startups and everything. But how are KPIs different for villages like what are the KPIs for villages basically? So two things one must know that when we started the program we selected 115 districts in India West Bengal did not participate. So 112 districts 112 districts were competing on outcomes. So whether it was health, education, uh nutrition, agriculture, those outcomes were defined clearly defined outcomes. those outcomes. If you read any piece on aspirational districts, you go to KPI’s outcomes, just Google and you’ll get all the outcomes of different areas. Health, nutrition, education, stunting has to come down, wasting has to come down to this percent etc. So they were defined and you were getting data on a realtime basis but the competition was on delta the change during the course of the month. If you don’t do it on delta then every time Kerala will keep coming number one because historically it’s been number one. The important thing is to capture the change during the course of the month. Keep competing month by month by month by month. For instance, the collector of Bijapur came to me. You know by the time he started from Bijapur when he you know he came to me and he says sir I’m coming fifth but I’ll manage to come second by the time I leave. There was still 6 days left by the time then I opened my computer to check up. By the time he had left Bijapur and reached Delhi, he had moved from fifth position to eighth position. The competition was so intense. Every collector was competing. So if you want to improve in India, make everyone compete. You know, competition is the key to success. That’s what I believe. If everybody is competing and if data and performance of everyone is put out, then all of you will improve. All of you must compete with each other. data must be put out and high intensity data must be put out. Politicians, MLMA must compete, collector must compete, district education officer must compete. They should all know what they have to achieve. First of all, in government, nobody knows what he has to achieve. So define what he has to achieve. The targets, outcomes are informed, data is taken, results are put out in public domain and then you start naming and shaming them. So those who come number one are given the collector is given 5 kores of rupees additional for that month to transform his district on whatever he wants to do and those who don’t achieve are told that you are the worst performing district and therefore the chief minister put pulls up his that collector so name and shame them the politicians are named and shamed by putting that data in public domain people must know that this politician is not delivering that is that is the model I followed at least and that is the model I believe I don’t believe in uh not having outcomes. I don’t believe in non not performing through data. I believe in hard data. I believe in real time performance. I believe in outcomes and I believe in creating competition and I believe in naming and shaming. That was a model of aspect. So gamification is applied to government as well. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. We have finally a course in gamification. We should add this chapter. Last question please. Last question. Sorry. Go ahead. I have two parts of the questions like first of all I want you ask I want to ask about the how do we solve the travel and sustainability like you are asking people to come but how are we on the surface level like entrepreneurs how are we supposed to push the governments to do that on the surface level first question second question travel and sustainability doesn’t go hand in hand uh like we see uh people coming but we are not able to eliminate a few aspects of uh usage of plastic for suppose like that kind of things are not like they’re not gone totally. So I want to ask how do we and and again how can we make it accessible? So two things first and foremost a city which has got garbage which has got filth which has got bad air quality which has got uh uh you know lack of proper toilets etc. Uh you’ll never get tourists you know I mean Delhi the peak season used to be November to January. If it’s got bad quality air, why should anybody come into Delhi? So a lot of that challenge is not merely because and I kept stressing this point about good governance. The failure in India in several parts is because of poor governance where there’s municipal governance but a lot of that blame lies on the citizens of India. I mean Delhi is the most educated city in the in the world. The households don’t even do segregation or waste. So my view is that citizens must take responsibility. They must raise voice. They must take leadership in several you know if Indor could transform itself within a period of 3 years from the filthiest to the cleanest city where there’s so much of sense of pride nobody can what worked in Indor. Even though there was good leadership of the municipal commissioner but there was a great sense of pride amongst the people and today you can’t throw a litter. If you throw a litter not only are you penalized very heavily but the other people will beat you up. So there’s great sur. So if three cities of India can do it pretty well the other cities of India can also conviction on the part of the municipal commissioner. Absolutely that’s municipal. changed the behavior of the people. He asked all the colonies, he asked all the citizens to be active. It can’t be done without community participation. So community participation was the key into into success of Indoor has consistently been the number one city and therefore was there some gamification there as well. Best colony, cleanest. No, so there is a competition where Indoor has been coming. But if you go to Indoor, it’s totally clean and tidy. So that’s my belief. The citizens and the community plays a key role. hit on this but how do we unlock that behavior I mean there’s one municipal commissioner in Indoor who was no it’s been done in Surat as well but 555 districts how do we take it to that so there are many other things I’ll tell you they mechanize their cleaning they got they use the they produce methane gas methane gas is used to uh run the local buses huge amount it’s a complete case study which can be presented uh here. I mean uh Sedat can come and make a presentation on indoor city or we can get the municipal commissioner to come and make a Oh, that would be Yeah. on how Indor was transformed as a city. On that note, sir, thank you so much. [applause]