The Exchanges

Q You built a company early on, right? In helping with clinical trials, or you did a lot of work on that?

A Yes, we did. Uh, so it was in 2006, 2007 at a wonderful co-founder Uh, Chris Isert, who, uh, also from our fraternity at Stanford, and, and, and what we realized was that, you know, the average cost of technology involved in clinical trials was something like, at that time, about half a million dollars, but you could do it for 50,000. I think the problem was that, that really, uh, entrepreneurs and disruptors hadn't really shown up on the scene. They were still using a lot of old technology, old processes, and honestly, although we Ended up moving on from that company, 15 years later, a lot of those opportunities still exist. It shouldn't cost half a billion, a billion dollars to run, uh, every clinical trial.

AI assessment note: “Yes, we did. Uh, so it was in 2006, 2007 at a wonderful co-founder”

Q You went to Stanford, Harvard, you know, afterwards as well. Like, like, how is this different than your education in India? Tell us, like, what did you experience in an American education that was different than what you had experienced?

A So I, I think one, what I loved about the American education is the freedom that they gave. I mean, we, I mean, we were at Stanford, right? We could take any class that we wanted. We could take any course. If you woke up one morning, two years in, we could say, Hey, you know what? I want to be a doctor. And as long as you're willing to put in the time, effort, energy, and really work hard, anything was possible, right? Versus an Indian institution, and I'm aware a lot of US institutions have this, but you basically at, you know, grade 11 or grade 12, when you still kind of figure out what you want to do in life, you pick a stream, and then you're stuck with it for four years, right? The other thing is, you sit in the same classroom with the same people, with the same professors, and then every, and everyone says, oh, you're getting a, Education, but a lot of times, to me, it felt it was just high school extended by four years, and I think if you really want to create entrepreneurs and leaders, you have to put agency in their hands very early on. You have to get them to take personal responsibility for their learning journeys, and you have to match that with a university system that allows them to do that, and, and quite frankly, for example, allows them to fail, right?

AI assessment note: “what I loved about the American education is the freedom that they gave.”

Q I mean, if it's so much cheaper in India and Indian markets growing, I mean, I mean, wouldn't some of this market eventually shift over to India and you'd be doing more trials there because that would just work because there's a billion people there?

A I think it's already happened and, and, and what we're seeing is particularly with late stage biotech and late stage pharma who get it, That they said, you know what, our U.S. launch is going to be three to five years over. Let's launch in India. Let's launch in Europe. Let's launch there. Get the data, uh, work with the regulators there. And so we are seeing companies targeted towards the U.S. market. That's their final aim because that's where the real money and the payoff is for them. But, uh, they're giving therapeutic access to a lot more different countries because their regulators can process this faster. They can do the clinical trials faster. They can generate the data faster. And that's what's happening. And, and it ends up being great for the U.S. because you do see a lot of data being generated in those countries.

AI assessment note: “I think it's already happened and, and, and what we're seeing is”

Q who, who don't always have as warm feelings to the U S as I would like. I see India as a natural ally. I'd like us to be very close in 1020 years. I think it's very important for the world that we collaborate. Like what can America do Over the next decade to make sure it keeps India as an ally. How should we be thinking about that situation?

A So I think consistency. If you look at, uh, India, US past 20, 3040 years, right? One of the problems is that as government changes, right? Uh, as people change, as Congress changes, you see a little bit of a, a change in, in how foreign policy and particularly the way India is engaged. I think every, every government in the US has prioritized India. They've always said, you know, it is one, one of our key focuses. But their ability to be constant and consistent in embracing them as a true ally sometimes goes back and forth, and I think India's coming out from a hangover when it was part of the non-alignment movement. Its best friend was honestly Russia. Every, every vote at the UN Council, Russia's backed India to the hilt for decades, consistently so, right? And so you have a lot of people in India And I won't say the elites. I, I think the elites are very aligned with the U.S., but you have the common people who see, like, look, here's Russia. They've always been there for us. Through thick and to thin, no matter what happened, and we have the U.S. who we love and we like to move to and immigrate to, and we love their economics and their policy and their freedom, but do they have our back? And I think, uh, demonstrating that consistently on a bipartisan basis Would give an immense amount of confidence to all levels of Indian society, saying that, look, US is not just our nat…

AI assessment note: “So I think consistency... demonstrating that consistently on a bipartisan basis”

Q So, India's first, industry-centric technology and liberal arts university. Uh, you know, one question we get asked a lot, because, you know, building UATX, like, Why build a new university versus go help another one or fix another one? What inspired you to do this?

A So for us, I mean, we are one of, uh, India's oldest education nonprofits, right? We've, uh, we started building out colleges and schools, uh, you know, right after independence in, in, uh, in, uh, your family's proud of having been in education for a long time. Absolutely. My grandfather was a freedom fighter, uh, after, uh, uh, India got its freedom. He was invited to be in politics. He didn't think he wanted to do that at all. And his way of giving back, uh, Uh, to society was to, to, you know, start in his backyard a school, and that moved on, and, you know, as, as, as the business grew, uh, you know, every year he would put some, uh, money aside, and, you know, we end up with something like, by 2009, 2010, about 10 schools, 12 colleges, but the problem is that because As we had been there for so long, and we'd worked very closely with the government, uh, there was, uh, education in India was still very much top-down. So the government told you what you could teach in the classroom.

AI assessment note: “the problem is that... education in India was still very much top-down.”