- 56 minutes ago
India and Europe Stacks represent two of the most serious attempts to build sovereign digital infrastructure at scale. This session brings together leaders from both sides to compare approaches, find complementarities, and explore what a collaborative India-Europe model for open, trusted, and interoperable digital infrastructure could look like.
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TechTranscript
00:00Good morning. Thank you for being there at the first session of the day. I was not sure you would
00:05be there.
00:06And you are really right because we will have a very interesting and time-sensitive panel.
00:13So that's my great pleasure and honor to welcome this beautiful panel.
00:18Aliette Mounier-Lompre is the CEO of Orange Business.
00:22Sridhar is the CEO of Zorro Europe. And thank you for being there.
00:28Arun is a professor at Ashoka University.
00:31And he knows the story of the global governance of digital forever.
00:36He did write very fascinating articles.
00:40And Zawed Arshaf is the CEO of ITPO. So you will see their logo everywhere in the room.
00:45And he's a former Indian ambassador in France.
00:49And because I'm the former French ambassador for digital affairs, we did a lot together.
00:53And to be frank, eight years ago, he told me, don't go to Delhi, go to Bangalore and meet the
01:01people in charge of the India stack.
01:03And that was the beginning of a long journey of cooperation between our two countries.
01:09And I said that we will speak about a very time-sensitive issue because probably you know, I see a
01:16lot of friends in the room.
01:19First, we have a huge concern regarding sovereignty.
01:22So call it how you want.
01:25You can speak about self-determination, strategic autonomy, freedom, empowerment, resilience.
01:32But we rely, or economies, on a very centralized and controlled and sometimes monopolistic infrastructure.
01:42And that's an issue for most businesses.
01:45I can just mention what did happen last Friday with Anthropic.
01:49That's crystal clear.
01:51You cannot build a business on a resource that can be suspended by just an executive order in one night
01:58without telling you that something will change during the night.
02:01So this is very time-sensitive.
02:03And maybe you didn't realize, we discovered that there are a lot of similarities between the French and Indian philosophies.
02:14We are two countries really attached to a certain form of sovereignty.
02:20So I won't speak because we have Brian speakers.
02:25But the idea was to have a casual and lively exchange around three questions.
02:31So I will ask you, and we can also interrupt or react.
02:35But first, what's your own definition from your business perspective, from your country's perspective about this problem?
02:42So don't make a conference.
02:44Just let's be clear and short.
02:47Then how do you feel the feelings in the other country?
02:51So what do we think about India?
02:53What do you think about France?
02:54And most important, of course, what can we do better together as countries and as democracies?
03:02So maybe we start with you, Aliette.
03:04And you did announce a very important deal with India recently.
03:09So the floor is yours.
03:10Thanks a lot, Henri.
03:11And indeed, I mean, my take on this is that, and I don't want to ruin the panel, but that
03:17digital sovereignty does not exist.
03:19I mean, that, of course, the digital supply chain is so complex intertwined, no one will be absolutely sovereign.
03:28And when we look at our clients at Orange Business, and those are the ones purchasing all those digital components,
03:36I'm used to saying they make their choices across a triangle of three criteria, which are price, innovation, and trust.
03:44And trust is not sovereignty.
03:45It's about having, you know, the resilience and the options and not to be locked into a solution.
03:52And I'm also used to saying that clients, they want, you know, U.S. innovation with Indian prices, competitiveness, and
04:00European trust.
04:01But it's very difficult to get everything into the triangle.
04:05And then it's a matter of balance.
04:07But usually private decision makers, they don't care about sovereignty as such when they make their decisions.
04:13What they want is to have the resilience and the freedom not to be locked into something that they cannot
04:19escape in the future.
04:21So, of course, we didn't spend time to look for a shared definition of sovereignty.
04:27So, of course, total autarcy is impossible and is not a good project.
04:32But to have, to maintain choice, to have the choice.
04:36For example, I just mentioned this.
04:38I don't know if, how many of you know about the Judge Guillou?
04:42Yeah.
04:43Oh, you don't?
04:45So, there is a French judge in the International Criminal Court.
04:49He did start an investigation on what did happen in Gaza.
04:54And the American administration was very unhappy with this.
04:57And they decided to sanction him.
04:59And this judge, Nicolas Guillou, which is, by the way, a French judge, cannot pay anymore anything online, cannot use
05:07Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Netflix.
05:10You cannot imagine.
05:12It could not happen in India because there is UPI.
05:15So, this is a reasonable form of sovereignty.
05:18You cannot let a foreign country disconnect your judge.
05:22So, for example, this is better than the French situation.
05:25But please, let's continue.
05:27Yeah, I think in context of today's world, I have to be careful on what I said because people can
05:32get sanctioned and it's going to affect your lives.
05:35So, on the topic of sovereignty, we are in a certainly very dynamic environment.
05:39On one side, you see the geopolitics changing.
05:43The second side, you see the technology landscapes changing, which is namely AI.
05:49So, we see this from our customers in conversations with them trying to find out the right solution.
05:56And the true answer, as Elliot said, there's no perfect solution.
05:59It has to be a compromise based on certain priorities, business priorities.
06:04And in case of governments, it could be national priorities.
06:08So, on one side, you need to have these kind of sovereign systems in place, but also make sure you
06:15don't lock yourself up in silos, which means interoperability is also a consideration to look at, let's say, like-minded
06:24companies, like-minded governments to work well together.
06:28And fundamental of all that is the trust element, because without trust, this will not operate.
06:35So, you need the technology interoperability, but also the fundamental elements of trust that basically supports that.
06:44These are two important elements.
06:45I'll stop and then pass it on to you.
06:47I see that the two companies here, you are not comfortable with the word sovereignty, because it's about states and
06:53war.
06:54So, maybe we should speak more about resilience, interoperability.
06:58Because sovereignty is independent.
07:00Yes, of course.
07:00And we all depend upon the other.
07:03So, that's the first message.
07:05Let's build resilience.
07:06We have to be resilient.
07:08Arun.
07:09Thanks, Henri.
07:09I think maybe we could look at sovereignty from a negative lens, as comprising some negative obligations that states should
07:20not be allowed to do certain things against other states, because it would be a violation of their sovereignty.
07:26Or you could look at it from a positive standpoint, that sovereign states have an obligation to their people to
07:34protect the essential services, critical infrastructure, but also to ensure that some technologies are used for the public good.
07:41That's also a positive obligation of sovereignty.
07:43I feel that in the conversation that we have, especially in the geopolitically turbulent times that we're living in, sovereignty
07:50has this negative connotation that you're trying to wall yourself off from the rest of the world.
07:55I agree with Elliot.
07:56I think it's impossible, given the complex nature of supply chains.
07:59But perhaps the responsibility is also on behalf of sovereign states to think creatively about ways in which they can
08:07take AI or digital technologies for the public good, and to find ways in which cooperation can actually make countries
08:17more sovereign.
08:18I don't think that is necessarily a paradoxical idea.
08:21A couple of days ago, a colleague of mine was telling me, look at the five highest countries that share
08:26intelligence.
08:27It's on a topic of high sensitivity.
08:31The sharing of intelligence between these five countries has made each country better off than the other.
08:37They're more sovereign.
08:38They're more able to handle their national security better.
08:40But it's also cooperation.
08:42Similarly, on technologies like AI, we can cooperate.
08:45And I think that's a fulfillment of sovereignty that we should maybe be thinking about.
08:49To be frank, I totally share your point.
08:53Some countries, I don't speak about just the U.S., tend to confuse sovereignty and hegemony.
09:00So they want to control the ecosystem.
09:03But we can also explore a way through open source, shared infrastructure, interoperability, which is a non-rival way to
09:11build freedom, let's say freedom, self-determination.
09:16And I hope that in 20 minutes we will end around these ideas that an EU stack and an India
09:23stack could be something very important.
09:26But, Jawed?
09:27Oh, well, I think already a lot has been spoken.
09:31Let me say three things.
09:32One, that the global order that we are all familiar with for past eight decades has collapsed.
09:38Number two, that no time in human history has so few controlled the lives of so many or influenced the
09:44lives of so many across the world.
09:46And number three, that technology will always be, as it has always been in history, a determinant of power, distribution
09:53of prosperity, competitiveness, leadership.
09:57So as we move ahead, you will see that the word sovereignty has become a very common word that is
10:03being used these days.
10:05Everyone is talking about national sovereignty, industrial, technological, and economic sovereignty.
10:10Because existing relationships have all collapsed.
10:13Trust has become an issue.
10:14So what does sovereignty mean here?
10:16It doesn't mean being self-contained or living inside closed walls.
10:21Everybody has spoken about that.
10:22But it's about a country.
10:25I mean, sovereignty is a national idea, not an individual corporate idea or a company idea.
10:30It's being able to exercise choices freely, independently, to say what is deployed, where is it deployed, how is it
10:39deployed, and what use is it put to, and how does a country or an elected representative government protect its
10:49people, its infrastructure, its systems, its national security, its economy from external vulnerabilities.
10:55That is where this entire thing comes together, and in this, I think what we are looking at, and in
11:03this, I think what we are looking at are two different aspects.
11:04One is capacities that countries have, second is the regulation, and that is also a function of the capacities that
11:13countries have.
11:14So partnerships, together with national endeavors will become important.
11:19And I conclude my first point by saying that having served here for four and a half years until very
11:26recently as ambassador, I saw a great deal of philosophical convergence, conversions of values, ideas.
11:32Between Europe and India, between France and India, precisely because in the emerging world order, India and Europe are the
11:40ones feeling the most vulnerable, and therefore there is also a need for greater collaboration because there is trust, there
11:48is a common perception of what the world should look like, and it should mirror our ideals.
11:54And the capacity to work together, and the capacity to work together has now been proven because we approach technology
12:01in the same way in terms of architecture, purpose, and its public character.
12:08And I think that's a very important force driving this India-Europe, India-France cooperation on the issue of sovereignty
12:17and technology.
12:17Yeah, and Aliette could testify about the capacity of cooperation, just because I realize that we are both from the
12:25diplomatic world and speaking constantly about geopolitics.
12:31So for us, sovereignty is a good world.
12:34But I understand that some people in the room can think that this is something that the authoritarian regime like
12:41very much.
12:42So there is an authoritarian way to speak about sovereignty.
12:46But just think about something.
12:48Without sovereignty, without a reasonable sovereignty, you don't have democracy.
12:53If, for example, the French citizen, we want to protect privacy, our children, and if we cannot implement this decision
13:03of the people, we are not a democracy anymore.
13:05So this is not just an attribute of authoritarian regime.
13:09You can be sovereign and dictatorial, but you cannot be non-sovereign and democratic.
13:14Think about this.
13:17But maybe, Jawed, you did open the door for the last round of conversation.
13:22How do you see this question in the other country, and how do you think we could do better to
13:30build a reasonable, unlocked prosperity?
13:35Yeah, I think I like very much what Jawed said, there's an alignment of vision and values between Europe and
13:43India on many perspectives.
13:45And you are right to say that sovereignty matters and is valid at a state level.
13:52What I was saying is that when you come to individual decision-making at company levels, the decision-makers, you
13:59know, very basically the CIOs, the sourcing VPs, they make their decision with different criteria.
14:06So we need to unite all of this, and ultimately, there are a few things we need to unlock, and
14:12I see similarities between India and Europe on a few things.
14:15For instance, I've been amazed to see the level of fragmentation we have on the Indian market and on the
14:22European market.
14:22We tend to see India as one thing from Europe, but India is very diverse.
14:29I was, for instance, very surprised to see that there are 27 certified sovereign clouds in India, and tech is
14:38a critical mass game.
14:40It's a platform game.
14:41If we want to scale giants, and if we want to scale alternative options to what we get today on
14:47the market, we need to find a way at state level to unlock the ability to scale those giants.
14:55And making alliances is one option.
14:58It's what we've done, for instance, we announced, it was back in March, a big partnership between Orange Business and
15:05TechMindra.
15:06It's more than 400 million euro deal, and the idea is that we combine the strengths of an Indian player
15:14based on agility, competitiveness, and the so-called sovereign or trusted infrastructure of a giant like Orange.
15:22And it's very powerful.
15:26Yeah, on this topic, what I'd say is one of the things that we talked about, the interchange of ideas
15:33and exchange of information.
15:36Based on trust between India and the EU, what we've seen is, I mean, there are a lot of similarities.
15:41The way, I mean, if you look at, I moved to Europe around eight, ten years back, and people talk
15:47about Europe as in one entity.
15:49But when you come here, you start realizing, no, it's not one, it's Germany operates in a certain way, and
15:55then France in a certain way, and Spain in a certain way.
15:57And there are different considerations to look at, and the same applies to different states in India as well.
16:02But if you look at the fundamental things, what Europe has developed in terms of, let's say, the EU GDPR,
16:08there are certainly a lot of good practices there that the world has taken and adopted and modified to their
16:13needs.
16:14Now, on the India side, there's India stack, and on which technologies such as the UPI, which power billions of
16:21transactions every day run.
16:22So there are certain elements which make it a non-brainer not to reinvent the wheel, but to kind of
16:28collaborate and adopt.
16:30So there are certain synergies there that lead in a good direction.
16:34So that's one.
16:36But when it comes to corporates, when it comes to businesses, I think everyone's looking at, corporates run on how
16:43do you de-risk the business environment.
16:45I think that's what's happening.
16:48So what's happened in the world has caused an element, brought in an element of fear that was not there
16:53before, and so everybody's looking at a plan B.
16:56That's the reason why the sovereignty question has come so much into prominence.
17:00So what if something happens with plan B?
17:02I should have a plan B to continue my operations without any disruptions.
17:05And that's where they're looking at players who are more, let's say, not just about data residency, but who basically
17:15controls the system, which law when it comes to jurisdiction supplies.
17:20And those have become more important.
17:23It's not just about this thing.
17:25And the third part is when you deal with a partner on which you're dependent to run your business, what's
17:32the thinking of the partner in terms of business model?
17:35What is their own resilience?
17:38What's their thinking on the longevity to support you as a partner in the long term?
17:43These have all come into question.
17:45So it's not about just, you know, if someone has the data in Europe, that's all done.
17:50It goes deeper than that.
17:52So that's where these conversations are leading.
17:55You did mention the India Stack.
17:57How many of you know the bit about the India Stack, ADAR, UPI?
18:02Do you know about it or not?
18:06So, quite none.
18:08So maybe, Arun or Jawed, you should explain a bit.
18:12Go.
18:13Yeah.
18:14India Stack essentially refers to this suite, if you want to call it that, of digital public infrastructure, which are
18:21essentially common railroads for essential services in India, which start with identity, payments, increasingly in e-commerce, health.
18:29There are several sectors in which this common digital public infrastructure have been implemented.
18:36And when I say digital public infrastructure, this does not necessarily mean that the infrastructure is owned by the state.
18:41It is considered as a public utility in that all Indian citizens, and in some cases, even non-citizens, are
18:48able to access this infrastructure based on a common railroad.
18:51The railroad is nothing but a set of very elementary protocols.
18:55In some cases, of course, we've had the Indian state come in and say, look, this is an important enough
19:01aspect of our governance, for example, identity, which is essential to providing social security, that the government will mandate it
19:09in certain sectors.
19:10In other cases, it's entirely up to different banks, for example, the common payment railroad that we have, which Anri
19:17talked about, the unified payments interface.
19:19It's entirely up to individuals, whether they want to use UPI to pay, or whether they want to pay by,
19:25you know, the traditional method of cash.
19:27So depending on the sector in question, the adoption of digital, the method of adoption of digital public infrastructure has
19:34changed.
19:35But what is fait accompli in India today is that going forward, as services become digitalized, we will have common
19:43railroads that will be the key to entering that particular domain of service.
19:48If you're a private player, if you're a public player, you have to, whether by sheer dint of market adoption,
19:54or in some cases, state mandate, you will have to enter the arena through this digital public infrastructure.
20:00That makes for, I think, a fair, more equitable, less weaponizable way of thinking about these essential services.
20:07And maybe in one word, so UPI, for example, the payment system, is very simple.
20:12That's a very small layer of public service.
20:15The government did publish a framework to design, to describe an API for payments.
20:21The banking system must implement it.
20:24There is a regulation authority, but maybe 40 people, to check if they do it properly.
20:28And then there are 600 startups, or even Google Pay, that are deployed on these infrastructures.
20:35So this is pro-business.
20:37This is an infrastructure to unleash innovation.
20:40And that's beautiful.
20:41And I mention it because that's a very interesting way.
20:45And Europe is going slowly in this direction.
20:47We are testing the EU digital wallet, for example.
20:50And we are going slowly, because we need to negotiate between 27 and big companies.
20:56But we are going, and we know very well what's happening in India.
20:59And we try to think from scratch about a kind of interoperability between those two systems.
21:06But, Jawed, what do you think about the future of...
21:09First of all, just to summarize what Arun said, it's an identity-based public layer.
21:18And on top of that, there are institutions, there are techno-legal frameworks, there are incentives, and there are markets.
21:25So it isn't public in the sense of a government owner.
21:27It's an open architecture.
21:29Anyone can use it.
21:30And you mentioned about, I think there's one great example of India-EU collaboration, and that stems from what has
21:39happened.
21:40Now, we all know that we need to train, now, AI-based models on data.
21:46Now, you can have a legal approach which locks everything, or you can approach, use something which we have evolved
21:54in India, which is unique in the world,
21:56which is called data empowerment and protection architecture.
21:59It's a techno-legal solution.
22:01It has worked extremely well, where you unlock the power of data, and you break down the silos between applications
22:11and between countries and jurisdictions.
22:14And you can use that data to train AI models, for example, without in any way diluting or compromising on
22:23data privacy, data security.
22:26And it is also a tribute to Henri and to the work we've done in the past that we are
22:31now going to deploy Deepa as a pilot project for the health data hub in Europe.
22:39So that's an example of how we collaborate.
22:42Now, EU-India are going to set up innovation hubs.
22:45We are going to set up start-up partnerships.
22:48But I think when we are talking about sovereignty, we have been speaking essentially in terms of risk mitigations.
22:55Two aspects.
22:56One is that, yes, you're right, there is a corporate view, and then there is a national government view.
23:03But it's true of any sector.
23:05When you look at clean energy, for example, or if you look at food safety, for example, these are all
23:11areas where there are private decision-making under an overarching government framework.
23:16And that's how I see the issue of technology and sovereignty coming in.
23:20But let's flip the coin and look at sovereignty in another way, which is prosperity.
23:26And this is where I think we have to recognize that in the dazzling world of LLMs and valuations running
23:35into trillions, we don't need Ferraris to drive in Paris and Delhi roads.
23:40We need to work in ways which we build.
23:43We're not caught between a state-controlled model of China and a completely proprietary model of the United States where
23:50four or five companies run the world.
23:52To work together, to combine our architecture, our values, our scale, and our skills.
24:01To once again be at the forefront of competition in the world of digital technology and other technologies.
24:11So that we are also offering not just ourselves choices, but we're also offering rest of the world choices.
24:16And that is a very important element of how Europe and India need to look at each other.
24:22Because Europe is falling, as Draghi reports said, falling behind in innovation and competitiveness.
24:26We are also behind.
24:27Is there some things we can do beyond, for example, digital, public, and structure?
24:33And I think Tech, Mahindra, and Orange are examples.
24:37This is an example where scale and quality and skills come together, bring talents together in a trusted framework, which
24:45we do have.
24:46And EU India FTA, which has just been concluded, is a great example of it.
24:50To show that how we can work together to regain competitive edge and try to compete with the leaders and
24:58offer global choice, sovereign choices to other countries as well, not just a duopoly in the world.
25:04Yes, we'll use maybe the last four minutes about this last topic, about AI.
25:09And I will ask you if you feel reasonably free in this world, if you have plan B, if you
25:15feel you have a plan B.
25:16Maybe I'll just share an experience because I have seen the beginning of this architecture, DIPA.
25:22So DIPA is an infrastructure to use health data very efficiently, but while protecting completely privacy, which is very difficult.
25:31And the interesting thing is that at the beginning, our Indian friends did discover the GDPR.
25:39And they told me seven years ago, Europe is right.
25:43We should find a way to organize the flow of private data with the consent of the user, of the
25:49people.
25:49And so this principle is unique, is European.
25:52We want to implement it.
25:54But, they said to me, why did you, with this principle, build such a burden for enterprise?
26:02Because if you have to implement the DIPA in your organization, that's a heavy burden.
26:07And they tried to conceive a consent management system to unleash innovation.
26:13So same principles, but better market energy.
26:19And now we have to learn from the way India did transform and implement the principle of the GDPR.
26:26And that's a very interesting conversation, too.
26:28But maybe in three minutes, I don't know if one of you want to jump on Jawed's words on AI.
26:35Because here, the need for a plan B is maybe higher than everywhere else.
26:40And how do you manage, maybe the two companies here, how do you face this issue?
26:44I mean, the geostrategic stakes are tremendous.
26:50Here again, unfortunately, when you look at market figures, I mean, 90% of the companies in Europe,
26:56and I think the figure is very similar in India, 90% are using US-based LLMs at the moment.
27:02So we are very lucky in Europe to have Mistral, for instance.
27:06But I think we need to look at the entire stack.
27:09It's not only the LLM.
27:10It's about building the entire stack and all the layers to give options and not to be locked into a
27:18proprietary system again.
27:20Yeah, that's the point.
27:21Because, of course, we use the best system, obviously, and fortunately.
27:25The question is, are you locked?
27:27That's the second question.
27:28And if you build an open architecture with the right reversibility
27:32and you are able to switch from one LLM to the other,
27:35then you will have enough competition, hopefully, on the market to make the trade-off
27:40and to create this balance of powers that will make the market much more efficient.
27:46Yeah, completely.
27:48It's a very relevant topic, especially in our context, in the context of Zoho.
27:54So we always believe in offering choices to our customers.
27:57By the way, we serve one million organizations across the world, power their business.
28:02And the way we offer the choice for them is two things.
28:06One is, in terms of the technology stack, we have actually owned and built the entire stack,
28:11not through acquisition ground up, which we say that this is a choice.
28:15If you want data to be within a certain confines, within boundaries, you have the choice,
28:20but you can also interoperate with third-party systems.
28:23So that kind of a choice is important to customers.
28:26And the second is, of course, customers always would say,
28:30okay, what ensures that you will keep the customer's interest in mind?
28:35That's always a question that corporates get asked.
28:38Vendors always get asked.
28:39I think it comes around to the business model.
28:41As a company, we've privately held, bootstrapped, over 30 years in business, building.
28:47So I think it comes back to building that trust and then giving that choice.
28:53And trust, of course, has to be earned.
28:54It takes time.
28:56On the choice of AI and innovation, I think a lot of customers, a lot of people think that
29:02they need the large models to solve every problem.
29:05And that is not necessarily the case.
29:08You can have a focused problem being solved by a small business model, small model,
29:14or a mid-sized model.
29:15You don't need a large model, which can also be very expensive to roll out to do that.
29:20And there are always alternatives if you think of what is the problem to solve.
29:25Okay.
29:26Last one word, I would say.
29:27It will be the last word because we have to...
29:29Look at the defense sector, clearly.
29:31France says we make defense equipment free of ITAD, International Traffic in Arms Regulation,
29:39which is the U.S. law for export controls.
29:42When you think of Anthropic and what they've done, export controls, it's the same logic,
29:47since it is so critical, new technologies for countries, everything, that at some point,
29:53countries are going to use the same principle.
29:55This has to be free of U.S. export control regulations or China's export control regulations,
30:01which means from critical silica all the way to use cases.
30:05And, you know, the overarching...
30:08It will take time to build, but these are the reasons why countries will now invest
30:12from critical minerals all the way to the use cases,
30:15when all the hardware and the compute power and everything that is needed in it,
30:20not necessarily at the same level, but the level they need.
30:24Thank you. That's a very good conclusion, and we have to leave the floor.
30:27Thank you for your attention, and see you soon in VivaTech.
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