Gautam Adani, Chairman and Founder of Adani Group in his keynote address on the day two of the TiE Global Summit currently underway virtually called on Macro-economic factors favouring India, intersection of digitalisation green sustainable energy, and accelerated new possibilities for India in a post COVID world as three major areas defining India in the next three decades.
India’s population is expected to reach 1.6 Billion. That means 1 in 3 of world’s middle class consumer will be Indian, making this modern middle class the biggest driver of India’s consumption, he said.
By the year 2050, Adani said, India’s GDP estimated to reach 28 Trillion dollars contributing 13% to the global economy.
Speaking about the role of digitalisation and sustainability intersection propelling the growth of India, Adani said that India would enjoy cheapest rates for electricity compared to the world due to the promising growth in green renewable energy.
Adani also mentioned that the marginal cost of bits and bytes will keep decreasing, further improving information technology which is another factor favouring India’s future growth.
India is set to position itself as a place of great opportunities of the 21st century and become even stronger 2050 onwards.
Innovation Engineering
The session on Innovation Engineering with Dr. Ikhlaq Sidhu – Founding Director & Chief Scientist, Sutardja Centre for Entrepreneurship & Technology, UC Berkeley threw light on various offerings in innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation is an area focusing on creating anything new but teaching innovation is hard and it cannot be taught like other subjects, said Dr. Sidhu. He shared his learning and processes that are adapted at their centre to teach innovation engineering.
He elaborated on how they learned. First they had case study / theory, then they started inviting the entrepreneurs as speakers basically to inculcate the behaviour and mind-set process into their students. They developed ‘The Berkeley Method’ to help individuals develop the mind-set and behaviours of a successful entrepreneurial leader. The Berkeley Method uses inductive learning and journey-based approach. The next step they took was to combine the behaviour and mind-set with the tech domain, which later developed as a framework for study and practice.
Dr. Sidhu shared few examples of Data-X projects where applied data science combined with venture applications such as Detection of fake news; Prediction application for stock market, sports betting; AI for crime detection, traffic guidance, medical diagnostics, etc.; and many more. He shared with the audience how the Data-X course works. With actual domain knowledge, industry connect and behaviour many innovative engineering ideas can come up, he said. The entrepreneurial mix makes it not just a class and gives a completely different output.
Innovation Engineering lies in the convergence of entrepreneurial mind-set’s, behaviour and journey and technology areas and challenges. Without entrepreneurship and innovation, the subjects such as A.I., 5G, etc are just academic and plain.
The innovation engineering tool and resources developed by them are public, open and free. Anyone who needs to innovate can use them such as instructors who want to teach, teams who wish to launch new products, students who are keen programming. Entire Syllabi, project models, all material, videos, entire class is available online for use by people who want to teach their own version or if they want they can collaborate with us, said Dr. Sidhu.
China’s path to a world leadership
The Fireside Chat with American international strategist and investment banker Dr. Robert L Kuhn with Sanjay Pugalia, Editor, The Quint threw up insights on how China and its leaders think and what we might see in the future in 2050. Dr. Kuhn with his keen observations on China spoke on various different topics viz., the fight of Covid, governance in China, its aspirations, etc. China is the second largest economy in the world and within 20 years it will be the largest economy in the world.
China has transformed dramatically over the years. It is now engaging with countries over the world and is the largest trading partner of almost every country, Dr. Kuhn said. It has an impact on the whole world, he added. Describing how they did it, Dr.Kuhn said that China’s primary interest was in improving the standard of living of its citizens. And it has taken a lot of steps towards this goal over the years. It has gone through a period of transition with reforms and opening up. By building an economy in China, it will have to reach out to more countries and companies in the world.
Answering a question on the strife of India-China at the border, Dr. Kuhn advised fir a status-quo. He said that China in post 2022 will be more nuanced, reflective and confident. It will be difficult for China to take a step back and be seen as a retreat till 2022, he opined.
Giving details about the vision of China, Dr. Kuhn said that China was a moderately prosperous society by 2020 and by 2050 it aims to become a modern, socialist society. 2021 being the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China. We are looking narrowly at what is happening now in China. It sees a broad vision going to 2050. It will consolidate in the next 15 years will political strategy with two big strategic stages.
From 2020 to 2035, China aims to double the size of its economy and elimination of extreme poverty. It has taken up various reforms to this end. And in the second stage, from 2035 to 2050, the aim of the ruling party is to develop China into a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful country. These may mean different things for us than for those in China.
He recalled that when he wrote that by 2050 China will be moving to the centre stage of the world, he was censored in Chinese media. As China wants the world to understand its policies and leadership. China sees a world where it will dominate not in a colonial or neo-colonial way. It is a big vision but mostly a domestic vision and China will reach out to foreign countries and companies to reach its goal. This will open up many opportunities for entrepreneurs, he added.
Speaking on the stark different approaches between Trump and Biden. Dr. Kuhn said that Biden understands that the US cannot go alone and has to engage traditional allies. And the best way to compete with China is empowering the local economy, education, R&D, building alliances, etc., he opined.
‘Scaling Fast – Social Entrepreneurship in India’
The first part of the ‘Scaling Fast – Social Entrepreneurship in India’ Session held Tuesday night was moderated by Viiveck Verma, Founder – Upsurge Global with Rohini Nilekeni of Founder & Chairperson, Arghyam and Smitha Siddanthi of Social Entrepreneurship SIG showcased how one can work with and support social enterprises.
Smitha Siddhanthi shared details of Social Entrepreneurship Group. In her presentation, Rohini Nilekeni spoke on her experience in solving problems and creating speed, scale and sustainability. She spoke on EkStep initiative improving literacy by increasing access to learning opportunities for 200 million children. She also shared her learnings in development of the Diksha platform for teachers for the Government of India. She informed that Diksha platform has grown in scale and diversity over the years in terms of number of QR coded text books, languages, number of states using it, content, etc. As of November 2020, the Diksha platform has 600 million plus textbooks QR coded in 33 languages and is used in 35 states / UTs. It has millions of users and teachers and has a whopping 275 million plus content plays with 3.20 billion page hits. During the pandemic, 1.17 billion plus training session with 43 million plus course enrolments.
The second part of the session had stalwarts such as Mayukh Choudhury of Milaap; Anshu Gupta of Goonj; Ganesh Natarajan of Lighthouse Communities Foundation working in social entrepreneurship space. The discussion was around scaling social impact organisations. Sharing details about their organization Mayukh said that their crowdsourcing platform in the last ten years has mobilized Rs.1200 crores. We have 35 lakh users on the platform today. He opined that product and customer happiness are critical to achieve scale. For us there are not just corporate jargon, it is survival, it is everything, he said. Milaap is the first crowdfunding platform in the country to be completely free, he said. Mayukh said that their social enterprise Milaap will go for an IPO in the next 12-24 months’ time!
Social entrepreneur Anshu Gupta, popularly known as the Clothing Man, Founder of non-profit – Goonj was of the opinion that growing organization is not as important as growing the idea. Doing good is a collective responsibility, he added. Anshu said that charity should not be sustainable. One gives what we have and not what we need. Charity creates donor and benefactor, there is no focus on receiver’s dignity. The idea should be to give dignity to the lives of many. He spoke of the stakeholders’ initiative.
Anshu Gupta spoke about how “Cloth for Work” (CFW) has evolved two new currencies of development – material and labour. Under this initiative, they identify improvements needed and partner with community to do the work and they are compensated with material resources like clothing, grains, etc.
Lastly, Ganesh Natarajan of Lighthouse Communities Foundation which runs a sustainable livelihood program for urban disadvantaged youth enabling social and economic transformation said that technology is common, using it well is uncommon. He said that technology is imperative for scaling and it doesn’t matter whether one is building a corporation, bank or a social enterprise. He listed four points as success factors in scaling as: think of scope first rather than scale; business model (like PPP); surround yourself with bright people and partners; and ability to raise money.
Experience of Fortune 500 Company CEOs in Covid Times —RICH KARLGAARDS
American journalist, author and entrepreneur Rich Karlgaard’s presentation was very interesting and eye-opening one. He gave a presentation on Megatrends in the 2021-2024 Economy with projections on business, markets and technology focusing on the post Covid time. He shared his insights on where tech driven organisations will be going in the near future.
The digital transformation which was 55 years in the making is now accelerating dramatically. Internet, Web, PCs, Smartphones, Search, Online Shopping, and Social Media are the old engines of disruption, he opined. In the last twenty years, the industries were transformed: Newspapers (Web), Retail (Amazon), Music and Movies (Spotify, Netflix), Software (SaaS), Cell phones (iPhone). The technology is evolving and transforming much faster now almost double the rate it did in the last twenty years.
The New Engine propelling the faster evolution is the confluence of different things. CPUs and GPUs, Cloud computing, Edge Computing, A.I., 5G with instant trend analysis of all Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the ability to immediately and significantly improve them.
The industries that will be profoundly transformed in the coming ten years are Agriculture, Oil/Gas/Energy, Construction/Manufacturing, Transportation, Banking & Insurance, Healthcare, Education, he informed.
Business Trends for the next four years (2021-2024)
- ‘Digital First’ strategies will continue to accelerate
- Extreme valuation differences create asymmetric warfare
- All industries re-shaped by digital acceleration
- Speed and adaptability to become existentially important
- Decline of the Jerk CEO and rise of the empathetic leader
- Growing talent and building teams will be radically reinvented
“A Video Call A Day Keeps Your Doctor Away”
Video consultancy is as good as real consultancy or physical doctor consultancy said Hari Thalapalli of CallHealth. Participating in a fireside chat with Vikram Vuppal, Founder and CEO of Nephroplus, he said like our old saying goes, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, the new mantra is a video call a day keeps your doctor away.
Participating in a conversation on “A Video Call A Day Keeps Your Doctor Away” Vikram A Uppala, the moderator of the talk raised an issue of e-ICU, an Electronic Intensive Care Unit. eICU is a form of telemedicine that uses state of the art technology to provide an additional layer of critical care service. Dr. Sekhar C Founder, CEO of Vigo Health, though it is going to be the future, but right now we are not yet ready. The technology may jeopardise this. The robust technology is not yet arrived. But, Hari had a different perspective. The technology is already in place and it is evolving.
The Panellist’s felt the e-ICU going to be very big in near future.
Things are changing. People need not go out to get their health care service availed. They can do so by sitting at home. More and more new technologies are being built now. You can do many things at home now than before. Hundreds and thousands of people were consulted and treated through remote healthcare delivery system he said. These 8 months changed a lot, he added
The clinical precision is getting better. Doctors and patients have come to accept remote consultation, which will dramatically change the way health care services are delivered remotely in future said Vikram Vuppal
All speakers were of the view that now with remote healthcare delivery services such as tele medicine, remote monitoring and home health care, doctors are able to optimise their time, precision is seen in diagnostic services and patients and their family members spread across the globe are able to interact with doctors all at one time.
Vikram shared that during these few months home health care services spiked up. Their dialysis services tripled during that period.
On export of health care service or technology, all the speakers felt that time is not yet ripe as the regulatory issues of different countries as of now may not support on any such ventures. As of now India has huge opportunities and also it is less regulated compared to other countries.
“Fossil Fuel Free World: When & How?
The current global energy use, with its overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels, has taken global warming to dangerous levels. Climate change is already hitting us hard, through adverse effects on global food availability, biodiversity, rising sea levels and extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and floods. In this light of background a Panel Discussion “Fossil Fuel Free World: When & How? was organised
Is it possible to have Fossil Fuel Free World? Definitely not at least in next 20 or 30 years. In India it may even take longer time, because of its legacy system. It may be possible in west because of their aggressive approach. In India we are not even talking about it. We may see Fossil Fuel Free India may be in 2070 or even later. Till such time, we must at least develop negative carbon technologies said Sumant Sinha, the Chairman and Managing Director of ReNew Power, which said to be contributing 1% of India’s Clean Energy.
In the last decade, a major transformation-the transition to clean, affordable and sustainable energy from the sun and the wind-is beginning to address these challenges, observed the Panellist’s Mahesh Kolli, Vikram Kailas. The discussion was moderated by Sian Sutherland
The panel discussed about how improved electricity infrastructure, decentralized smart grids, electric vehicles, energy storage which are already providing clear pathways for the transition towards green, efficient, affordable and secure renewable energy across the energy-use chain: extraction, conversion, transmission, distribution and end use
Renewable are going to drive the growth. Technology is going to evolve. The business models are going to change. Even the market value is shifting from Fossil Fuels to Clean Energy Companies they observed.
Vikram said people want harmony with the nature will bring in a lot of transition.
Sian summed up that the clean energy industry did not even exist in 2010. The industry is built during the past one decade. I am extremely optimistic about the future.
