Q: In the automotive industry, India has established itself as a global manufacturing base. But in terms of technology the country is way behind. How can India accelerate its development pace in these disruptive times, especially in the automotive industry?
I’ll put it this way. Indian talent is our capital. How can that talent be used to create cutting edge, exponential and frontier technologies is our challenge. Are we capable of facing it? Yes. We go to Silicon Valleys and face it, right?
The multinational companies have more than 1200 R&D centres in India doing research and development by employing young Indians. For many companies almost 1/3rd of their global Intellectual property is getting generated here. That means Indian IQ is capable of creating cutting edge IP by working with global organisations.
Q: Then there are examples of Indian engineers leading global organisations.
Yes, but that’s a separate matter. In terms of our talent, we are sort of second to none. But what is required is creating that ecosystem in which we thrive.
You can see the startup movement that has started. There are 88 unicorns that we talk about with a market cap of more than USD 1 billion. I did an analysis, and I thought all of them will be from IITs and IIMs. Sorry. But 52% of them are from elsewhere, not from IITs or IIMs. They are from Tier2 and Tier3 cities. Some of them are dropouts. Why would they do that? Because they had the right environment.
A digital sort of environment is given to them. Previously when hardware was very expensive, they got cloud. Previously, software was very expensive, but they got open-source software. Previously, data was expensive. Look at Jio. They created one GB for INR4, the cheapest in the world. Therefore, when all these became sort of affordable, and the conducive environment, coupled with a policy like Startup India, life became a little easy for them, for example.
At the Maharashtra State Innovation Society, we changed our public procurement rules and tendering processes to support startups. And now 21 states have innovation councils, and they have sort of startup policies. So everywhere, what we have tried to do is to make it easy for them, including intellectual property, filing patents.
Having 88 unicorns within no time is not a joke. Over USD 27.1 billion were invested in Indian startups in the first six months (of the financial year). It’s a world record of sorts. Why? That confidence is there now because we can do that. So, I would simply say it is to leverage our talent by creating the ecosystem. Talent, technology and trust are crucial, as I said.
Q: There’s a little contrasting viewpoint that perhaps the environment, at least in certain sectors, is not conducive enough to stop the brain drain. For example, recently, seven out of eight research scholars who have filed for their thesis for PhD in one of the IITs, left for organisations overseas because they didn’t find opportunities in India. How can such challenges faced by promising talents be addressed?
I think these are isolated cases. Very frankly, I see a completely different way. I see a phenomenon of brain drain to brain gain, to brain circulation. In essence, young people are returning. And I see that because I’m very closely connected with the industry.
I was chairman of IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education & Research) in Mohali, as well as in Calcutta. Out of the five, I was the chairman of two. We could get young people from Stanford, from MIT, from Caltech from Princeton. They’re coming back because there are opportunities. I’ve been chairman of the national innovation foundation for 18 years, and stepped down a couple of years ago. I remember I conducted an interview for the selection of a CIO (chief innovation officer) and I saw an individual’s CV who specialised in brand building. I said great, tell me how will you brand my India. I said, ‘Look, US brands itself as a land of opportunity, how would you brand India?’ He said, India is a land of ideas. This is the good news and the bad news. The good news is India is a land of ideas, the US is the land of opportunity. Now that is reversing. India is becoming a land of hope, that is when the reversal is basically taking place.
Q: You have been associated with the automotive industry also for long, including as a Board member of Tata Motors, Reliance Industries. Do you think the time has finally come for Hydrogen? There have been talks on it for a long time.
There is no doubt about that. You know, there is always this hype versus hope curve. There was a hype. The Hydrogen thing started a long time ago, but the time was not right. That has happened now. There are a number of reasons. One of them of course is the pressure due to climate change. We have to find alternative sources of energy, there’s no question. And hydrogen just stands out at the top. It’s a splitting of water, using clean electricity and getting efficient electrolysers, that’s all that is basically required.
To get clean electricity, or to go solar was very expensive. Solar costs have been brought down by a factor of eight in the last 10 years. And they will go even further down. That is where the game changed. Otherwise, the game was not on. Therefore, you can create clean electricity from them. I think the factors partly because of the climate change push but partly also adoption of solar in a massive way, have sort of helped in changing the future output.
Q: As a scientist yourself, what do you think are the prospects for synthetic fuels, which are also carbon neutral in nature?
Hydrogen is a carbon neutral fuel from that perspective.
Q: Provided the source is clean?
Yeah, provided the source is clean. That is the issue. Otherwise, we are already producing grey Hydrogen. Reliance produces grey Hydrogen at USD1.6 per kg today. We are talking about 3 and 4. They are doing it at USD 1.6 already, because they have a coke gasification plant. Basically, coke is a waste. From waste they create value.
It is a question of creating green Hydrogen. And that is becoming possible because of these costs of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind coming down.
Q: Let’s talk about leadership. Can India take a leadership position in the global stage in this technology-intensive, innovative age?
I believe so, that is why I started in 2000, the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative. I believed that leadership was capital. 20 years ago. I believe in it more. I’m not having a knee jerk reaction simply because a Twitter CEO is Indian. Microsoft CEO is an Indian. There are 25 other such examples. So, these are the products of our education. But there are certain other qualities that Indian education has given them. That’s why they are favoured. What is so different about Satya Nadella? There are so many others technologically competent, but there are certain special values that they carry – the ethics, the morality, the family values, which talk about tolerance, liberalism and the rest of it, you know, that make them different. That is how they’re able to do the transformation.
Q: In this disruptive age, the need for collaboration is more important than ever before. How can more successful collaborations be achieved in India? For example, there’s good scope for more, deeper industry-academia collaboration.
Can I give a one-hour lecture on this?! This is my favourite topic by the way. I gave a lecture 15 years ago on ‘Indian mind versus Indian mindset’. The Indian mind is taking us into the 21st century, the Indian mindset is dragging us back. This is the challenge in creating partnerships.
A bigger, common purpose is necessary. Once you take that big purpose, people sort of align together. It is almost like, suppose you have a piece of paper, and magnetic needles are spread all over it. Then you pick a magnet, what happens? They all align. That magnet is the purpose; the one thing is a big purpose.
For example, leadership. In my own experience at the National Chemical Laboratory, initially, there were a lot of divisions, which would rarely talk to one another. I made certain changes in such a way that there was an interchangeable sort of partnership. When I went to CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) as DG, 40 national labs were like 40 individual labs. When I left there was one project where 19 laboratories were working together.
