00:00You're facing yet another morning of new tariffs potentially with President Trump threatening South Korea with an additional 25 percent.
00:09You know, 2026 is going to be better or worse than 2025.
00:13So overall, I would say the trade order in the world is shifting.
00:17It's moving a lot more to bilaterals from a common global sort of standard supply chains.
00:23And that, in a way, is good for companies that are set up to think about countries rather than just regions.
00:30And we've been doing that for some time now.
00:33We, of course, began with India and China as specific focus 20 years back.
00:37And we can now replicate those models for Germany, for Korea, for Japan, for Singapore and Malaysia separately.
00:45And that, I think, is helping us in move with agility.
00:50What does that help achieve? Higher margins? Speedy decision making?
00:54So I would say definitely speedier decision making because the organizations become flatter and they are able to then operate to changing conditions.
01:03But it's great for customers because then customers and partners get a lot more agility and simplicity from our front end.
01:11And that's what we are really enabling in terms of working there.
01:14Okay. Well, it's good to know that you're trying to make the best of what has been a chaotic 14 months.
01:19But this morning when you woke up and you heard of the potential additional tariff on South Korea, what does that mean specifically for your local business there?
01:27So I haven't really engaged to understand the details there.
01:30But I think there is news comes both ways.
01:33The similar news that is coming on today, being in India here, is the EU-India FTA.
01:39And I think that is a very good indication of what could happen in global supply chains.
01:44It means a really increase in trade both ways between India and the EU.
01:49It also means that India's manufacturing capability will get a boost, as will for many other countries in the EU.
01:58And the longer term impact is co-innovation on both the information technology world, but also in the physical world,
02:06as we think about manufacturing, as we think about energy, given that we are here at India Energy Week.
02:12All right. I know you want to talk about India Energy Week in India, but I'll go back and make a last try at, you know,
02:18what is the net impact going to be if that 25 percent additional tariff on South Korea comes through in terms of will you have to rejig regional supply chains in some significant fashion
02:29or will it just be a direct hit to your bottom line?
02:32So, as I said, I haven't seen the specifics of what has been announced.
02:36But what I can say that we are geared in local supply chains overall, and we've been doing that for the last five years.
02:42So, this doesn't happen overnight. We've been really working, and that began because of the pandemic.
02:47I think that was a great wake-up call to everybody in creating supply chains that could work within local ecosystems.
02:54We did that, and therefore, we are very well set up to work with uncertainties that come in with any kind of bilateral changes.
03:01All right. You know, what looks most interesting to you in technology right now?
03:05So, I've spoken about it recently. This whole concept of physical AI is a new capability that's not just a concept and a pilot.
03:15It's truly landing at scale. So, maybe just first conceptually explaining what it is.
03:20If you think of a car plant in, let's say, the five top geographies, which is the US, China, Germany, Japan, and India,
03:27then you would say the car plant is different product, different technologies, different kind of a setup, different sets of people in skills that come into those plants.
03:36Therefore, the physical AI that will depend on the domain there, the context of data there, and how determinism plays out in that plant
03:43will actually configure differently in each of these geographies.
03:46And therefore, physical AI has an opportunity to be developed differently in each country.
03:50Now, that's conceptual. It's landing in a real basis in energy already.
03:55I'll take the example of autonomous control centers in different energy plants.
04:01We just announced in December our autonomous control center in Buruj in UAE.
04:07And that's an energy plant which, therefore, leverages the power of AI in truly creating efficiency,
04:14in creating effectiveness of assets, and enabling workers and skills very, very differently.
04:19We are seeing that autonomous land differently in different regions of the world,
04:24which is, I spoke about the Middle East, the US, Asia, all are developing differently.
04:29Why? Because energy sources are different. The setup is different.
04:32All right. So, this just simply means, you know, a multifold expansion of business opportunity for you.
04:37That's what you're telling me.
04:38It definitely means that we are geared to work in a way which is very local, but also create new technology. Yes.
04:46All right. Talking about the India opportunity, you have, what, more than 13,000, 14,000 people here in India?
04:52Yes.
04:53Are you looking at a significant expansion to that number?
04:56And where do you see the best potential right now?
04:59So, India has always been, for the last two decades, a very big focus area for us.
05:04And we've built it over a period of time, not just in one type of capability.
05:08It's not just software. It's not just the global capability centers.
05:13It is not just manufacturing. It's not just the front end of creating our connections in 20 cities with customers
05:19and being present to reach more than 50 cities. It's all of that put together.
05:24And therefore, we continue to expand in all of those areas.
05:27Definitely, India is gaining momentum at this point in time because it's playing in very different areas.
05:33I'll give you one example that people don't talk about too much, but it is unique for us.
05:37There are only two places on the planet where we do core engineering and research for the energy value chain,
05:44which is basically pilot plants for, let's say, refineries and other petrochemical situations.
05:49The two locations for us are Illinois in the United States and Golgaon in India.
05:56And this was done two decades back. So, we've scaled it over a period of time.
06:00And now it becomes a very significant capability that India can now provide to many parts of the world.
06:05Are you not impacted by the 50% tariff that India has been facing for the last several months
06:11on account of President Trump's trade war?
06:13In some parts, it is likely, especially in sourcing.
06:17But the way we are configured, we are able to work the supply chains.
06:21The India products that are going out are likely to be for the Asia-Pacific region or for the Middle East region.
06:26So, you've had to redirect a lot of that over the last six months?
06:29I would say we were geared already with the pandemic five years back.
06:33We started working the local supply chains five years back.
06:35So, we were geared to work in the current bilateral situation.
06:38So, there has been no cutback in terms of the India product or services that you were exporting to the U.S.
06:44As I said, we already had local supply chains which are very different.
06:49Okay.
06:49And so, for instance, when you say that the India-EU deal might help, then if your supply chains are so localized,
06:57then how do you hope to benefit, let's say, from additional trade between India and the European Union?
07:01It opens new opportunities.
07:03Such as?
07:03We were not doing that much maybe from India to the EU.
07:07But with the FDA, that's possibility both ways.
07:10Because we have a lot of manufacturing in the EU, we have a lot of manufacturing in India.
07:13I think we can optimize that much better going forward.
07:16Okay.
07:17One of the things of key talking points here at the India Energy Week is really going to be the big new demand elephant in the room, which is AI.
07:25How are you looking at that opportunity?
07:27Where do you see maximum potential for growth, let's say, in the near term, which is 6 to 12 months?
07:33So, I spoke about…
07:34Outside of the U.S., which everyone knows about.
07:35I spoke about physical AI.
07:36Let me land that in the outside of the energy sector, which we've seen a big pickup in 2025.
07:41Think about physical AI in buildings, in process plants, that is energy, and in the industrial context.
07:47Buildings is something that everybody relates to because a building is an airport, it's a hospital, it is a hotel, it is an office.
07:54A data center?
07:54It is a data center.
07:56It's also a school.
07:58So, if you think about that, every building needs energy efficiency, it needs a better way of providing safety and security, it needs a better way of providing productivity for people.
08:08A lot has been talked about the potential of AI in helping these buildings.
08:12We saw a big uptick in 2025 for this turning from pilots to real production-scale environments.
08:19We have seen universities, chains of hotels really implementing this in a big way.
08:25Airports were doing that already.
08:26Offices are coming together to do this.
08:29Today, I would say just by the end of 2025, we have more than 200,000 sites now globally that have implemented this capability of connected buildings,
08:40which is creating a very large amount of data and benefit to the customers.
08:44So, I think this is a momentum that is now feeding itself as we go forward and we are seeing many parts of the world.
08:50Singapore is a great example.
08:52We announced this partnership with EDB for efficient buildings in Singapore.
08:56It's also a lighthouse for the world.
08:57What gets done in Singapore will actually be seen by a lot of the world.
09:01Hopefully, India's smart cities will learn from that.
09:03One final quick short question.
09:05The biggest challenge in this transition, the AI transition and the AI energy transition?
09:11I think it's really about moving the appreciation and training and skill sets of people to leverage it, both as a provider as well as a user in customers.
09:23That has been the biggest sort of, I would say, blind spot for many of the companies doing this.
09:31We have been working on this for a long time.
09:34So, we bring in talent of many different kinds and that, I think, is an asset for us because we are geared already to do this.
09:41We began this journey five years back and therefore, we've been really ramping up that talent base and our customers appreciate it because we bring the best to them.
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