We can be leaders, not just followers

India is a large market. At any given time millions of products are sold. But we import almost everything – not just mobile phones, but laptops, computers, refrigerators, televisions and even all the components that make them. India has all assets to take full advantage, but it is China that gains from this large market.

The two main assets of India that I consider important are the right price point for commodities in the market and the second, the huge talent pool. Around two million engineering graduates pass out every year and most of them can be trained within a short time to become talented youngsters. In my personal experience, I have seen students from Tier-3 engineering colleges deliver excellent results after just four to six months training. This scale of talent is what the world lacks and India should leverage and build on this. 

We need to focus on design and development of products. I’m sure with our available skills, in a relatively short time we will be able to achieve results at a much less cost than anyone else.

An electric car at Rs 4 lakh!

Recently, a local Chinese electric car manufacturer had surpassed the sales of Tesla Model 3. I found the Chinese company was able to sell the car at just around 4000 USD against Tesla’s price of about 38,000 USD. This was possible because of the huge market of China and their manufacturing capabilities. Inspired by this, along with my team, we charted a plan to check our capabilities on doing the same, with entire design and development from India. We confirm that within a year we can do something better than the Chinese car and that can be sold in the Indian market for about Rs 4 lakh. The entire development would cost us around Rs 30 crore and we can develop every part here in India, including the batteries, motors, controllers, the vehicle unit and the software. While it is possible, the problem is the unwillingness of a leader to come forward and manufacture around 50,000 units a year so that the cost can be contained within Rs 4 lakh. It is not about the availability of money, but it is that we don’t have a leadership that has the guts to go ahead with a bold vision. 

Battery swap – we lost four years…

Few years back, we developed a concept of battery swapping for e-vehicle. Though we had everything ready, we were not able to get a go ahead from the government because they wanted to find out if such a thing existed elsewhere in the world. This was being proposed for the first time ever and we did not have people to believe that we would be able to do things first. Though we have got it approved now, we have lost four years. We need to believe we can be the leaders rather than the followers. 

Another area where we can take a lead is in renewable energy. Though our per capita energy consumption is low, India is the third largest energy consumer. Only about 7 to 8 per cent of our energy comes from renewable resources. We need to task ourselves to make India become 100 per cent renewable energy reliant. The IITM Research Park has about 1.2 million square feet and I have decided that within the next two years we will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy. If 40,000 such complexes in the country are powered by green energy, the amount of economy that it will generate will be in the terms of lakhs of crores of rupees. But more than the money and man power, all that we need is the guts to think big and boldness to execute it.