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Decentralized Networks and Empowered Communities A Conversation With India
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00:00Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:30As VivaTech opens to the general public, it's going to be another day filled with crazy interactive sessions, this time
00:35in French.
00:36And some of the themes that we'll be discussing then will be love tech and gaming, so do take part
00:42in that.
00:42But first, as I said, we're going out with a fascinating discussion as Marion is back to interview Dr. Pramod
00:48Varma,
00:48who's CTO at X-Step Foundation and co-founder of FIDE.
00:52Together they're going to focus on India's investment in decentralized networks
00:57and the economic implications across business and society.
01:02Please give them a warm welcome.
01:32Hi everyone, thank you for being with us here at VivaTech on this third day of VivaTechnology.
01:40Welcome to you, Dr. Pramod Varma. You come from India.
01:45Yeah.
01:46Your doctor?
01:47Yeah, computer science PhD.
01:49Computer science, not medical, but computer.
01:52Not medical doctor, yeah.
01:53Exactly.
01:55It's very thrilled to have you on stage because India is very interesting to explore, you know,
02:05in terms of how digital is fully transforming the country, the most crowded country in the world right now.
02:14Yes.
02:14Now over China, 1.4, I think it's a billion people?
02:191.4, 1.5, we don't know.
02:22It's a rounding error for us.
02:24Exactly.
02:25With, of course, like, I would say, of course, it's maybe overqualified maybe,
02:32but I would say a passion for tech, which is, of course, something that you are exploring for a few
02:39years now.
02:40We're talking about decentralized networks and empowered communities, but we're talking about India at large.
02:47Could you give us an idea of what is tech, how digital, in key numbers?
02:54What about that?
02:55Could you highlight?
02:56Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
02:57Again, pleasure to be here.
02:59India is currently the most populous nation in the world.
03:05So, it also means, for us, it creates two challenges.
03:12One, that of a scale, the scale of India with 600,000 villages, 1.4 billion people.
03:22It's quite large.
03:23Second, we are extremely diverse.
03:27We have 22 official languages, a few hundred languages actively spoken.
03:34So, think of us like the whole of EU, right?
03:38So, it's not, it's a single country, but it is very, very different culture.
03:42So, both diversity and scale creates very large challenge for us to be able to include everyone and in the
03:53economic growth.
03:56That is what began the journey.
04:00So, India has been known for our engineering might in one sense, right?
04:06We had a very largest number of engineers we produce in the world, doctors and so on.
04:11But, mostly, it was used to build technology for countries like yours or America and UK and Australia.
04:21But, I think in the last decade, India started using technology as a lever to create inclusion of a billion
04:34people into the formal systems.
04:38I'll give you numbers.
04:39So, in 10 years ago, less than 17% had bank accounts.
04:48Less than 10% had nationally usable identity.
04:55Less than, you know, 10% or even less than 5% had smartphones or connectivity.
05:03We were barely in 2G networks then.
05:07But, what it meant is that we had a very, very fragmented society in one sense struggling to be part
05:17of the digital, you know, opportunities that is being created.
05:22So, the first thing India did as part of our ambition is to do the political support of what's called
05:33Digital India.
05:34It was a very aspirational approach to use digital as a means to bring 1 billion people into the formal
05:45system.
05:46So, we started with a digital identity program.
05:49Now, currently, 1.4 billion has digital identities in India.
05:54Then, subsequently, we gave bank accounts to everyone.
05:57So, in less than a decade, we went from no one having bank account to everyone having bank account.
06:03So, we have everyone having bank account.
06:06Then, of course, we also created telecom networks.
06:10Today, 800 million smartphones, a billion people on the internet, and we have the largest data plan.
06:18That's a challenge, you know, because we know that for digital, massive adoption, it all starts with coverage.
06:26You know, if we don't have internet access, if we don't have, if you don't have, like, you know, a
06:32good coverage, what about the coverage in India?
06:35Yeah, so, I think one of the things Indian regulator, telecom regulator did well is to create reasonably competitive telecom
06:46players.
06:48Then, they also, from time to time, they would give licenses to new players, the way you see new banks
06:54here, over the new telecom players.
06:58So, one of the telecom players, who came in 2016, launched telecom, new age network, 4G networks.
07:06They invested heavily in the country, but by then, a billion people had digital identity, and a billion people have
07:14payment infrastructure.
07:16So, they used the, under digital identity, and digital payments, to onboard 100 million customers in six months.
07:25So, they were the real challenger, who pushed them, our connectivity, and India went from 1 GB a month, per
07:36capita consumption, to 1 GB a day.
07:40Today, Indians spend 1 GB a day, one of the cheapest data plans in the world.
07:46It's very cheap in India.
07:47So, the coverage is about 99 percentage coverage, telecom network coverage, 4G network, already covered.
07:55So, we are, except in extreme conditions, very well connected in the country.
08:01We could, of course, highlight, before entering, about Beacon, I would like just to emphasize a little bit more about
08:09Beacon, and the ambition you have.
08:12Let's maybe highlight, also highlight, the outsourcing, because it's one of the key factors that India has accelerated in the
08:22digital, you know, in the digital at large.
08:25Plus, you know, you probably know that Satya Nadella, CEO, president of Microsoft, but also a lot of techies, people
08:36in the Silicon Valley, a lot of CEOs are coming from India.
08:41They are Indian.
08:42So, you, could you get benefit from that, before we're entering the topic, just a word about the diaspora?
08:51Yeah, so I think India's, India opened up our economy in 92, 1992.
08:59And, 1992, we brought a lot of changes in our policy to bring innovators, market players, new banks, new telecom
09:09networks.
09:10Until then, everything was run by government, and that's not efficient in general, you know, it's not sustainable.
09:17What it brought is that one of the waves was IT outsourcing.
09:21So, because of the number of engineers we produced, was so large, but they were not useful much in the
09:28domestic market, so they were serving the global market.
09:31It also meant people like us, many people, got exposure to the world market.
09:39And if you look at Silicon Valley, America was one of the largest consumers of India's tech industry.
09:47And because of Indians moving there, and you can see Google, you know, Microsoft, big tech at large, CEOs are
09:59Indians.
09:59But what happened in the last 10 years is that outsourcing is no more the driver for our economy.
10:11India became, because of our domestic consumption, India is not depending on that much of a foreign revenue as it
10:20used to be.
10:21So, today, India, the domestic economy is extremely vibrant and extremely, you know, so we can consume ourselves.
10:301.4 billion.
10:311.4 billion people, and everybody's per capita income increasing.
10:34That means they're buying, they're selling, they're participating in the economic growth.
10:39That means many of the new age entrepreneurs, so this changed in the last 10 years or so.
10:46Many people choose to stay back in India rather than going to U.S. or somewhere else and start startups.
10:55So, we have, we went from about 1,000 startups in six years ago to 100,000 startups today with
11:051,000 unicorns.
11:06So, we have 1,000 unicorns.
11:08So, everything is happening in India, and that is driving the digital innovation for the car, for the market, rather
11:16than for we doing it for service for others.
11:19Thank you for highlighting that aspect of, yeah, the key success factors.
11:27India has also had a lot of inputs in how, in digitalizing the public infrastructure, you know, with, I don't
11:38know if you've heard about, the unique idea of any Indian citizen to make more easy, you know, any process
11:47online.
11:49Probably, Europe has been inspired by Indian experimentation.
11:54And now, I would like to talk about Bacon, which is, is it a continuity of the policy, of the
12:01government policy within the digital inputs?
12:05Yeah, so, the way you want to think about India's digital public infrastructure, DPI, is that we believe that the
12:16digital highways,
12:17the way, the way, the way, the way we build physical highways, and physical infrastructure, like airports, highways, railroads, for
12:27economic boost, economic, you know, growth.
12:30In the digital world, we ought to build as a country, all countries, must build digital highways.
12:38And the digital highways should be a public utility.
12:42It cannot be monopolized by one company.
12:45So, what we call the digital public infrastructure is a set of layers, like payment networks, data networks, and so
12:53on, that are public interest, and they're public utilities.
12:59But, laying the highway is not enough, you need to set the rules and governance, that are transparent, participatory governance,
13:08but beyond that, you need innovators to innovate and create that economic growth.
13:13So, it's like an over-the-top strategy, you have public infrastructure, the first, a basic, governance, and the market.
13:20And the market.
13:21Yeah, market innovating.
13:22But, what happened is that we realized payment infrastructure, identity payment infrastructure, and data infrastructure is not enough.
13:31We ought to build open commerce infrastructure.
13:36Today, Indians, I have a bar, the aggregator, aggregator platforms, large aggregator big tech platforms, would try to monopolize the
13:51market by becoming a huge aggregator in the middle.
13:55And let's take mobility, for example, taxi booking.
13:58The drivers, after some time, find it very hard to pay that amount of commission, but there is no choice.
14:07For most people, there is no choice, but other than one or two apps.
14:11So, the question we were asking is that why does the driver cannot be discovered and booked directly without an
14:21intermediary, digital intermediary?
14:23So, India started laying an open source protocol.
14:27It is not government-owned.
14:29It is completely open source.
14:31It is on GitHub, completely open source, called Beckend Protocol.
14:36Beckend Protocol has about globally 2,500 plus volunteers in the community, continue to grow.
14:44They thought about how to unbundle and decentralize the commerce networks and create a language.
14:53Is it like, maybe to make things clear, like a blockchain, but not a blockchain, but the blockchain spirit?
15:01Okay, so, think of, okay, let me give you a simpler example.
15:05How is that I am able to take my phone in India, maybe an Android phone, using a telecom in
15:15India, speak to you, who is maybe using an iPhone, using a French telecom here, right?
15:22Okay, it's because the GSM protocol, protocol, GSM, as a standard, allowed interoperability of voice.
15:32Similarly, I can use Gmail to send you email.
15:36You may be on Yahoo mail or something else.
15:39How is the interoperability of email working?
15:43It's because the protocol is defined.
15:46Sure.
15:46Same as internet.
15:47Internet works on HTTP.
15:50When you type HTTP, that allows two systems to communicate.
15:55We are designing the HTTP for commerce.
15:58Think of that.
15:59The HTTP for commerce.
15:59Or GSM for commerce.
16:00That is Beckend.
16:01That's Beckend.
16:02Okay.
16:03Completely open source.
16:04To answer the question, what is it for?
16:06Now it's more clear.
16:07You want to allow and shake the commerce ecosystem?
16:15Yeah.
16:15Is it also for startups?
16:17I guess, yes.
16:18Yeah.
16:18So the way you want to think about it is that internet gave rise to many, many, many innovations.
16:27Thousands of innovations to happen, right?
16:29So Beckend protocol allows entrepreneurs to build software, apps that are Beckend protocol compliant.
16:41It's open source, completely open source.
16:42And create your own network.
16:45So India, for example, few entrepreneurs have came together and created an open taxi booking mobility network.
16:54That means I can have any apps.
16:58Through that any app, I can actually discover a driver near me and driver could be using any other app.
17:05And I can actually book and pay them directly.
17:08There's no intermediary.
17:09So it seems, but correct me if I'm wrong.
17:12It seems that you want to compete with something like App Store.
17:17You know?
17:18Not really.
17:19Not really.
17:20I think App Store is following the same pattern of producers and consumers being on the same platform.
17:29Beckend is trying to undo that.
17:30Beckend is saying consumers could be in any platform.
17:34Producers or service providers could be in any other platform.
17:38But like HTTP or GSM or SMTP, I can actually talk between two platforms.
17:46So you don't need you.
17:48It gives you a lot of choice.
17:49So the drivers or the hyperlocal SMEs or the restaurants, bookshops nearby, they don't need to be under Amazon or
17:58Uber.
17:59They can be directly visible to the consumer and booked directly.
18:04So it's a very interesting way to reimagine what comes next in the Internet layer.
18:10Internet opened up content.
18:12That's very interesting.
18:12But once again, I'm trying again.
18:15Dr. Parma.
18:17I see one competition with big players, you know?
18:21You mentioned Amazon.
18:23You mentioned Uber.
18:24I think Uber, et cetera, which are, you know, key players.
18:28But it seems that it could be challenged, you know, that kind of super, you know.
18:34Super, yeah.
18:35Yeah.
18:35It could be challenged.
18:36India is challenging it.
18:37It's probably your ambition, right?
18:38It's not a vision anymore because I'll give you the example of the mobility network.
18:43We launched the community, launched the taxi booking network in the Bangalore, the city I come from, about eight months
18:54ago or six, seven months ago.
18:58And today, we just clocked three million rides just in that city across the network because drivers now are saying
19:09that tech is with me.
19:13And if I have my, I am digital, I can be discovered by anyone and directly book with me because
19:20I am the taxi provider.
19:22You are the rider.
19:23Why do we need anybody in the middle?
19:25Yeah.
19:25So, back to the visit, and I'm sure that the audience and the online audience are already aware of that.
19:33Back to the visit from Tim Cook, you know, last month with Prime Minister Modi.
19:39Yeah.
19:40Do you think it was at the heart of the discussion?
19:44Partly.
19:45I think India is really pushing openness, being open, not a closed system.
19:54Open systems are very key.
19:56Open internet, open democratic payment networks.
20:01Open AI.
20:01Data networks.
20:02AI is huge for us.
20:04AI is going to impact such large scale.
20:07We cannot have, you know, algorithms monopolize people's life.
20:12So, India is absolutely pushing same democratic principles that we all believe in.
20:18Power back to the people.
20:21Power back to the people.
20:21People have to have agency and choice.
20:25Choice.
20:26Two words.
20:27Agency and choice.
20:28In their ability to participate in the digital economy.
20:32And if one large company says no, we would have to fight it out.
20:38And India is going to be open about it.
20:41I'm pretty sure large companies eventually will support openness.
20:46I think they will all come around.
20:48That's our hope.
20:50That they will believe in the larger costs and support us.
20:53One more before we end.
20:56That's a very interesting discussion.
20:58Thank you for that.
20:59About AI.
20:59Of course, AI is everywhere.
21:01Even at VivaTech, of course, as you know.
21:05You told me on backstage that in India you have a purpose.
21:09You have to need to identify a purpose before accelerating, you know, on large models and, you know, all the
21:17emancipation around that.
21:19Could you tell us more about the purpose?
21:21What could be the purpose on AI applications to come?
21:26I think India is looking at AI very, very differently.
21:29In two points.
21:30One, first point.
21:33Many developed economies.
21:37The people are seen as a cost.
21:42So, the AI is used to replace the people.
21:46That's how they are thinking, right?
21:48India, we are thinking people are not the cost.
21:51They are the value for us.
21:52So, it is important we look at AI to add value, productivity, increase productivity of people and increase capability of
22:04people rather than replacing people.
22:06So, it's a very, very different way to think about AI.
22:09Another mindset, yeah.
22:09And second, we believe open AI data sets, data, open community data and open AI models are very, very key
22:19for us to be able to ensure AI goes to healthcare, AI goes to finance, AI goes to judicial.
22:28It starts, you start asking fundamental questions about society.
22:32Yeah, yeah.
22:32Saying that does this algorithm control me or do we control the algorithm?
22:37It's not tech for tech.
22:39It's not tech for tech.
22:40Tech for good.
22:41Tech for what purpose?
22:43What purpose?
22:44I think that if you don't understand the absolute purpose behind that tech, tech can be very, very dangerous sometimes.
22:52Let me just ask you the last question because otherwise I will be angry with the technical team is angry
22:59on me.
23:01Regulation is, of course, the key word into the AI debate.
23:05Regulate, regulate, regulate.
23:07How do you explain that there is a lack of what you're saying?
23:13What is the purpose for humanity?
23:15I don't see, you know, on any text, any projects of laws, etc.
23:22This question, which is, of course, at the center of anything, you know?
23:27How do you explain?
23:29First of all, I think the question about regulate, regulate is a one-sided way to attack the problem.
23:36It's like saying anti-competitive.
23:39I have a large company.
23:40Let's break them up.
23:41We should ask the question, why did we even allow those large companies to take over, right?
23:46So we need to ask two questions.
23:48One, how do we bring accountability and regulate accountability, responsibility by companies who are deploying AI?
23:58If you are deploying AI, you need to take responsibility and accountability for it, for harm or anything else.
24:04But on the other side, we are also asking, if you democratize AI, then we don't need to be subservient
24:12to one or two large companies.
24:13We can have a thousand, much more choice with options.
24:18The choice gives a very different angle rather than regulating few companies.
24:23I would rather have hundreds of companies developing AI, everybody having access to open data sets and open models that
24:33allow a lot more democratization of AI.
24:36So we need to give accountability, responsibility on one side, but we must democratize.
24:41Otherwise, we cannot have only two companies and continue to impose regulations.
24:47It will never work.
24:48Sure.
24:49Thank you so much to Dr. Pramod Verma.
24:52Thank you very much.
24:53Thank you.
24:53Pleasure to be here.
24:54We can applaud Mr. Pramod Verma.
24:56Thank you.
24:56Thank you very much.
24:57And see you probably next year at VivaTech.
25:00Hopefully, yeah.
25:00We hope that you come back to update about Bacon Protocol.
25:05Thank you very much.
25:06Bye-bye.
25:06Thanks.
25:08Bye-bye.
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