On the India-US Partnership:
India and the US as partners will make great nations even stronger. I think it adds two percent to the Indian GDP every year and I think it can add 1 percent to the US which is the largest economy in the world. The vision for the next century for the world, I think, does require the US and India working together. India (through trade partnerships and the diaspora) is touching every person in the US. And I would argue, the US, India partnership is touching every person in India.
Whether it’s in the jet engines, whether it’s in the drone cooperation, an ability of both sides (has been demonstrated) to move further on a trust model than they would have done with anyone else. And so most people will say the results have been fantastic. I think the results have been good. I think they can be fantastic in terms of the growth (potential).
The perfect storm in a positive way is about to happen. That perfect storm will be enabled by AI and people have just begun to scratch the surface of what it means. If you look at the track record, we’re just getting started.
On the upcoming US Presidential Polls:
No matter who gets the job, the relationship with the US will not dramatically depend on either leader that wins.
I think it (the US India partnership) is going to accelerate regardless of which person wins here in the US election, because both of them will be very much committed to the US India strategic partnership.We are about to see a period of tremendous disruption – if you can disrupt others more with speed yourself, that is where you can break away. Our two countries, especially in the last decade, have moved at a tremendous speed. I always say, where is the best place to be invested in the last 5 years? It is India. And the second best place? Is invest in India twice.
On expectations from PM Modi’s third term in office:
The stability of a third term sends a message of predictability and safety of investments into India. In his first 5 years in office he laid the ground for the next five. In the next five years in office he laid the ground for the next 25 years. I think this five is about laying the framework of the century. This is India’s century
I think the focus will be on the right priorities. It’s about increasing the standard of living for every person in India. It’s about the inclusion within that. It’s about dealing with creating the 1.2 million jobs per month that we have to do. It’s about solving some of the world’s biggest opportunities and biggest challenges, because India has a database of 1.4 billion people.
I met PM Modi five years ago and he said that the real issue is, how do I allow every person in India to own their own data and actually be able to capitalize on it? He was way ahead of his counterparts on the thought process overall. But when you have that data in the AI world, it’s about speed of innovation. It’s about the models you use. It’s about your data that you have. It’s about your advantages. Take advantage of that data in a way that can cure cancer, that can do startups at a speed that has not occurred before.
On the future of the Indian Economy:
I always think, try to think far out. India will probably be 90 to 100% larger than China at the end of the century and (by a) 30 to 40% margin of the US. That is the most likely outcome.
(Becoming the second largest economy) could happen somewhere in the 30-40 year type of window. I think it needs to be adjusted along the way, because it (India) has moved faster than anybody thought it would, by a lot.
The internet (accelerated) three times the speed with which things occurred before and disrupted everything. So at that time, I said 40% of the Fortune 500 would disappear off that list in the next decade. Pretty accurate. Today, somewhere between 65 and 75% would have come off that listing, whether it’s the Fortune 500 in India or the US around the world. The key is, are you going to disrupt or are you going to get disrupted. When you look at India, not only is it the number one, fastest growing unicorn environment, it is also the world’s number one when it comes to IPOs.
On the Chinese economy:
China should have been the largest economy in the world and China should have been the most innovative. They missed their window of opportunity. And this is where a top-down approach to innovation does not work. You got to create the environment, and a large part of that is an environment of a democracy, where you have people who don’t always agree and who have different opinions to each other.
On promoting joint defence innovation:
One of the key elements is how do you get startups going? How do you really get them to grow? I would look for perhaps a sovereign wealth fund (that invests) in the emerging technologies that we share tremendously, starting with AI and cybersecurity. And I think they ought to be one too, for maybe semiconductors.