The chairman of the Quad Investment Network said India has many chances owing to its skill base and capacity to spring up as a second significant industrial base outside of China and can lead Quad nations in crucial technology fields.
After the Quad Summit in Japan and ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US, Quin chairman Karl Mehta and special advisor Alex Trueman are in Washington DC for meetings with Biden administration officials.
The Quin encourages Quad country investors and executives to co-invest in essential technology. QUIN premiered on May 20.
Mehta stated the Indian government’s ‘Made In India’ program is huge. Mehta said India aspires to become the global manufacturing plant like China has been for 30 years.
As a Quad nation (Japan, India, Australia, and the US), India has great prospects. It is the only developing nation because the other three are developed. “India has a huge talent base,” Indian-American serial entrepreneur Mehta told PTI.
“I think India has a lot of opportunities both from its talent base and its ability to stand up as a second big manufacturing base outside of China,” he added.
Quad Investment Network has identified nine essential technical areas for supply chain and Quad leadership.
Semiconductors, renewable energy and essential minerals, quantum technologies, mobility like 5G or 6G, cybersecurity, health tech, biotech, defense tech, and space tech.
We’re diving deep into these technologies. We are building excellence centers in each of these four nations with top professionals. “We are launching a Quantum Technologies center of excellence with experts from all four countries in two weeks,” Mehta added.
“These expert groups are going to help and guide and create the direction and very specific goals in terms of where technical collaboration opportunities exist today, where we can help enable it from the Quad Industry Network; where these players need help in terms of market access and helping them solve the regulatory hurdles that might be coming in the way of developing the markets for this new tech,” he said.
Mehta claimed India dominates these technologies. India collaborates on sophisticated technologies with the US, Japan, and Australia.
India’s vaccine research efforts helped the Quad country alliance. That’s why the vaccination collaboration became a health security partnership.
“I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for India to play a role in every one of those nine technology areas that we mentioned,” he added.
Mehta founded and headed EdCast Inc., an artificial intelligence-powered Knowledge Cloud platform funded by Stanford University and bought by Cornerstone Inc., before directing the Quad Investors Network. He was a Menlo Ventures partner.