Modi, Tech CEOs Align on India's Future: MIT Expert

New York, Sep 23 (PTI) There is a “perfect alignment” between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and global technology CEOs' vision for India in areas like semiconductors, Artificial Intelligence and biotechnology, an eminent academician in the US has said.

Modi interacted with global technology CEOs at a roundtable here on Saturday.

The roundtable was anchored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), School of Engineering. Professor Anantha Chandrakasan, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at the Institute and Dean of the MIT School of Engineering, chaired the roundtable.

“It is my deep honour to convene and host this roundtable with Prime Minister Modi and the CEOs of some of the most impactful tech companies in the United States and globally,” Chandrakasan told PTI in an exclusive interview here on Sunday after the tech roundtable.

He said the roundtable focussed on a "broad-based set of topics”, including biotechnology, pharma, Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing and semiconductor technology.

“What was really impressive to me was that the CEOs talked about their technical and leadership directions, but also what they're doing in India today and what they would like to do more of. It's truly impressive that there was an eagerness to work between the US and India. So that was striking,” Chandrakasan said.

Chandrakasan added that “equally important was the fact that when Prime Minister Modi described his vision for India, he talked about skilling, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and the ethical use of artificial intelligence, biotechnology. So very similar types of goals and I saw a perfect alignment between what the CEOs of the tech companies were saying and what Prime Minister Modi's vision was,” he said.

Chandrakasan said that many of the CEOs talked about how they're going to expand their footprint and collaborations in India.

“So I see that individually, but what I heard from the CEOs was even more exciting, was the fact that there's a lot of similar goals. And I believe collectively between industry and academia, there could be tremendous partnerships between the United States and India,” he said.

Chandrakasan said he “a little bit struck by” how much the companies are “deeply invested in India, and how they see this tremendous growth opportunity, and that many of them had similar goals. So it made me think that in addition to the individual goal, there could be shared collaborations across the industry and academia,” he said.

Among the CEOs who attended the roundtable were Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, NVIDIA Founder, President and CEO Jensen Huang and CEO & President of HP Enrique Lores.