B20 Summit India: Kris Gopalakrishnan Shares Key Recommendations For B20 Leaders
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00:00 We are at the B20 India Summit and I have with me Chris Gopalakrishnan, who is the chair of
00:04 India Task Force for Tech, Innovation and R&D. Chris, thank you very much for joining us on
00:10 NDTV and BQ Prime. My first question to you, you have this big task of tech innovation in R&D and
00:17 it's constantly changing in this world. What are the key recommendations that you have given to the
00:24 G20 leaderships? So we had a task force which consists of 170 people from across the world.
00:31 All of them participated across four broad areas and about 15 work streams
00:41 and we have made about 18 recommendations. We have also collected a compendium of best practices
00:48 about 125 of collaborative innovation and R&D programs that companies have already executed
00:55 and this compendium will be released during this B20 Summit. We have also recommended that we
01:02 create a digital platform for collaboration between the G20, B20 organizations so that they can put in
01:11 their challenges, put in solutions, putting funding requests. People can work across geographies on
01:18 collaborative R&D projects. So our recommendations are across four broad areas. One is digital
01:25 technologies where India is seen as leading. Second is on deep tech and emerging tech,
01:35 you know things like cure for cancer etc. The third is clean tech, circular economy,
01:43 where we believe that there needs to be work done in order to address the issues of for example
01:49 plastic or issue of recycling and standards for recycling. And then there is a horizontal theme
01:58 where we put in ideas like we need to increase the women in STEM jobs and things like that
02:10 and that needs training women, encouraging more women to take on STEM streams so that we see more
02:19 women in these areas. We are ahead in many countries in digital technology especially digital
02:26 payments and the theme is also about sustainability, financial inclusion not just in G20 but beyond G20.
02:34 How do you use this technology and how does geographical, will there be any issues with
02:40 respect to when technology crosses geography there are issues with respect to IPRs and others,
02:45 how do you handle that kind of challenge? So many of the technologies are released as
02:52 public platforms, open source code and released as public goods and India is very open to other
03:02 countries adopting these and using these, anyway they are open source technologies.
03:08 So there are not many IPR issues but there are issues related to implementation of these things,
03:16 you know the partner that they need to have for implementing and the global technology
03:21 consulting firms will become the implementation partners which the countries will choose.
03:27 What about the stack form that in India we have the tech stack at the bottom of it is a public
03:33 infrastructure which gives you the entire range of ID and other stuff which also takes care of the
03:39 legal framework with respect to privacy and then you have the private sector coming over with
03:44 applications and then you know building up that stack. How is that stack can be made across
03:49 countries and across? So once the digital public infrastructure is available,
03:56 private innovation can happen on top of that. Now private innovation can actually migrate from
04:02 India once the digital public infrastructure is available or there can be local private
04:07 innovations. Now the digital public infrastructure has things like identity, things like concern
04:14 layer, things like a digi locker kind of mechanism to capture your data and things like that. Now
04:25 data protection works on top of that and the regulations may be same, may not be same. One
04:31 of the things that we are discussing here is how do you harmonize these laws so that it doesn't
04:37 change across countries or the changes are minimized and things like that. But once you
04:45 adopt this architecture, the key thing is to adopt this architecture, the ability to migrate
04:54 to other geographies especially the developing countries significantly increased and that's
05:00 what we are recommending. Does your entire thing also looks at the entire concept of AI and how
05:09 it could be disruptive or it could be also in advantages to everyone? We believe that AI will
05:16 be advantageous by and large because every technology that has come till now including
05:24 digital computer we have seen is by and large beneficial and there may be some misuse that
05:31 happens with technology. Now where this misuse can be upfront identified maybe we can find
05:38 technology solutions but sometimes the misuse cannot be identified upfront then we need
05:43 regulations. Now this is true for any technology so if you look at an automobile what do we have?
05:50 We have roads on which you can drive the car, you can't drive it on the pavement, you need a
05:55 driver's license to drive the car. There are various rules, there are safety equipment within
06:03 the car so you have to wear the seat belt, the manufacturer has to provide the seat belt.
06:09 So any technology is like that, so the technology will come over time we understand
06:17 the benefits of that technology and the downsides of the technology where we can protect people from
06:23 the downsides we will provide it within the technology itself like the seat belt where it
06:30 can't be there will be regulation saying that you have to drive only on the road. What is the role
06:35 of private equity and people like you because you've been funding innovation
06:41 and technology and everything so what is your role? How do you see private equity can
06:47 come into this and enhance and push it further? See risk funding is necessary for innovation
06:53 because innovation is risky. We say that one or two out of ten startups will succeed
07:00 right so you need to fund ten then only you can identify the two that will succeed so that is
07:07 where risk funding is necessary. That's a class of asset which works very differently from other
07:14 classes where the risk is lower right the public markets for example you know they're regulated
07:22 they're well run, transparency is there, disclosures are there, there has to be a board which will have
07:29 independent directors so there are so many ways in which you have made sure that the risk in public
07:35 limited companies are lower than private companies and lower and it's you know when it comes to
07:42 startup the risks are even higher right so we need a class of asset that will fund these and that's
07:48 the role of the VC fund. The PE funds come in the middle they look at companies that are
07:57 that can be made more efficient that are not doing well they buy these, they streamline the operations
08:03 and then exit them. So different classes of these assets, these funds have different purposes and
08:11 all of those are required in an economy. I was asking this because Mr. Uday Ghodek spoke about
08:15 the fact that we need 4.4 trillion dollars over the next seven to ten years so where all that
08:20 capital is going to come from will PE and VC play a big role in it? So he also gave a solution right
08:26 he gave a solution that you know as part of our recommendations we are recommending that 0.2%
08:34 of the profits is earmarked for societal good. So that's the recommendation. Thank you,
08:41 Chris for joining us on NDTV and BP Prime. Thank you.