China

“If you look at the size of e-commerce is only 24 to thirty billion in India. And if you look at just one company in China, ah, called PDD, it does sixty four billion of GMV.”

“Actually, we have leapfrogged China in one area that's in UPI because we were able to get all the 21 banks together to work with each other and make all payments, you know, almost frictionless and also the cheapest way possible.”

“There are, you know, four hundred million people who buy products in, in China compared to, like, maybe eighty million in India now.”

“In India over the last two and a half years to three years, we have built a portfolio of about 10 companies so far, and we look to further build this portfolio into 20 to 30 companies and in, in China, RZ has more than 60 companies that are invested in, in US …”

“To give things into perspective, India was doing three billion dollars worth of GMV for the full year, while China on its 11 11 singles day did seven billion that year itself.”

“It's very likely that we may like China, we may have a glut of masks in, in a few weeks from now.”

“And when you compare this globally, in China, for example, 85% of the workforce is employed by this middle. Even in Bangladesh, close to 60% of the workforce is employed by this middle.”

“In U.S. The tech companies are catering to a very thin sliver of the market because of the existence of public and private infrastructure of education. In India, the entrepreneurs are creating, are really creating their infrastructure from bottoms up full stac…”

“China also has had the problem of not creating any globally competitive tech companies. They, of course, they've created large consumer companies, but in a protected market.”

“A lot of consumer companies are moving all of their, there is to, Buy everything from China. They're now starting to make, move their manufacturing to India. US companies, which have previously been from China are now buying from India.”

“Second was this whole trade war going on between like US and China, where the cost of manufacturing overnight have shot up to about 30%.”

“And if you look at unicorns in India, in China, in US, right, almost all of them you will see have raised their first round or raised some money from founder angels in their early round.”

“In US, there are maybe 40 smartwatches sold against thousand people. In China, it is close to 20 smartwatches against thousand people. And in India, it is close to one and a half smartwatch against thousand people.”

“So we had the first strategic that came in two years before in the form of Alibaba. Unfortunately, because of the, all the issues that were there with China and stuff like that, they couldn't make further investments.”

“India is not known for a lot of consistency in their products. Compared to China, which is very mechanized as a setup, right? So, you know, the products are going to get out with a certain quality fail rate, and it's going to be largely the same, what you're e…”

“So, in many ways, Siddhartha WhatsApp in India is the WeChat of China, right? To a large extent, because it's really where we today are conducting our lives, right?”

“While China has more than 80,000 screens, India has 5000, 106,000 screens, and if you Further divide into regional cinema and Hindi cinema. I don't think hardly 3004 thousand screens are left.”

“We realized OEM signed two camps, Either they're very smart, and they know that we won't have EV. Ok. EV is still like a 10 year old story, later story. Or they're idiots, and they think importing from China is a brilliant strategy.”

“Volumes, they are ahead, but volumes will catch up in the next three, four years. But in terms of just sheer technology, and product quality, and product the feature list. No, I'm not just speaking for Aether. I'm just, I'm speaking actually about the entire e…”

“So I think abhi even like people are saying access to capital come ho gaya hai, but phir bhi agar koi jage hai invest karne ki te toh, that's probably still India. Because you know, the whole, all the hopes on China are not playing out as well. US, Europe, two…”

“The United States, the biggest power followed by China and India, and Europe is lost. Europe is an aging digital colony for the US.”

“In the 1950, we had the richest economy in Asia because China was destroyed, Southeast Asia was destroyed, Japan was destroyed. Of the five richest families in Asia, three were Indian.”

“Apollo Tires wanted to buy a company called Cooper Tires in 2015. Cooper Tires biggest plant was in China. They said, you brought Indian. Of course, not in Hindi, but if you bring an Indian, I will not let you enter my factory. They refuse to enter, allow Coop…”

“Women participation in the Indian workforce is really dismal. Ok, we are at 20% overall and 15% in urban India. Compare that to USA, which is at 55%, China, which is at 60%. Ok, and male participation rates in India are 80%.”

“And I still remember we were standing in the warehouse of that business and they were doing two and a half lakh orders that particular day when we were standing in the warehouse.”

“I think India today feels at the right juncture where I am hopeful that within 10 years, we would be much, we would have closed the gap much more than where we are in terms of our abilities to build World beating products compared to China.”

“Definitely. Definitely. There's no question about it. They're far more mature ecosystem to, like, in, in our narrow space of recommender systems, this is the specialization within AI, which we sort of work on, they're far ahead of India.”

“Because the famous speech of Ding in China was in 1970 eight, December 1319 78, when he asked for New ideas and new ways of doing things. So even then we, even at that point, we did not change. As compared to China, we were all, we were perhaps one decade behi…”

“Some people say that South Korea and even China moved fast because they focused on exports. That is true. But that is no longer possible when even the developed countries are not going to grow fast. And the attitude in the developed countries is also changing …”

“So, we don't we don't do any manufacturing. All our manufacturing is outsourced to our manufacturing partners. And this is our India, China, Thailand, Turkey, Italy, and five countries, my manufacturing partners.”

“Together, China and USA don't draw to 50 cubic kilometers as much water as we draw individually for ourselves. So we are the world's largest user of groundwater”

“However, rest assured that if we are able to manage the Brahmaputra, which falls within India, we will not lose much water to the Chinese Dreams of building dams because roughly 80% of the water that flows in the Brahmaputra actually is rainfall which falls on…”

“But when you come to arable land, that's the land that can be cultivated. India is actually in the same position as the USA and China.”

“Part of the research we saw in Tiripati or some of those places where you sell hair, you know, you donate hair and this hair is eventually going somewhere and gets sold. So the commodity of hair is going out. So let's say a Chinese buyer is buying their hair. …”

“Another surprising stat, for example, people often think China is a very centralized country, but actually it is extremely decentralized In operation. So a large percentage of their government spending happens at local levels. Our government is exactly opposit…”

“We have done investing in China going back to the beginning, although that's tapered off more recently.”

“I think there is increased interest in, in India and in Southeast Asia and in South Korea, specifically as people think of other ways to get exposure in Asia.”

“Can India be number two? Number one, I doubt it. I don't have visibility to it. Can India be number three? Yes. Because of sheer economy of data, scale, data, people, talent, and Indian young population.”

“India has a larger population than China and India is likely to remain a larger population than China for the foreseeable future, because China's population decline is now well and truly set in.”

“While sitting in San Francisco you know, you might have felt like, oh my God, this is a sweatshop for that person. It was upward social mobility. And as much as they may not be happy with that existence, it meant that their life was improving.”

“Although Tesla has a massive factory in Shanghai, but the approach is that we will support our companies, and that's why BYD today is much, much bigger than Tesla.”

“So your current exports that you're looking at, whether it is lithium ion batteries, whether it is EVs all of that is a product of this, that you have shifted that flow of capital to these domains.”

“Instead what we seem to be learning from China is industrial policy is good. And I don't think that is necessarily what India should be learning. You know, yes, in some cases we need to have industrial policy, but not across the board. We don't have the money …”

“So what you have seen over the last three years, and there are wonderful charts to show that, that every year, Property sector investment falls by about nine, 10%. Access to capital for developers falls by about 13 to 15%. Whereas the manufacturing sector inve…”

“Around 2001, China joined the WTO. Which I think gave it this rocket fuel to sort of launch into this next century. And that I think was a big change, right? You had access to Western markets, you had access to Western capital far deeply than what you had in t…”

“China still remains a thriving economy. It's a much larger economy, about five and a half times India's size. It's efficiency and state capacity I think is much better than India's and its ability to deliver on outcomes is much better than India's.”

“Likewise, the companies that came in with joint ventures sooner or later, their joint venture partners Got the skills, understood the technology, understood the processes, and broke away, and then were preferred by local governments for their subsidies and the…”

“China grew at its best when it allowed people to experiment. So there was no one China model. There were multiple China models. Every province, every city could experiment under the broad goal that we need to expand GDP growth. And the best outcomes were then …”

“Often, you know, when we discuss India and China, people say India has too much democracy and too much politics, and China functions better because China does not have politics, right? It's a single party state, central control. That's not true. It is a single…”

“Chinese connectivity to ports is brilliant. And that's why even if capital is wanting to come to India, they will look at those factors and say, look, it's good. It's cost. And I can't do this therefore. So I'd rather bear the political cost of being in China …”

“The policies which were set right by that party, that same policies continued for 40 years and made China a developed nation, right? So you, it had a large streak of compounding in good policy making and those stayed consistent.”

“So for the last 20 years, people who invested in China made like 10 X of their money. Because all this ecosystem of Alibaba by dance electric vehicles, manufacturing was getting created in China.”

“People want to invest in a smaller economy, which is open, which is growing as compared to a large economy, which is closed and it's like a black box.”

“Their per capita income and their GDP are now five times India's, you know, and they become competitors with the USA because they're spending three percent of GDP on R&D. India spending only .7%. So in other words, China spending 20 times more on R&D than Indi…”

“When India got such independence, all the South Asian countries China, you know even Singapore and others, Thailand, Indonesia, they were at Korea, Japan, they were all at the same level.”

“In America, in China, in Brazil, you know, about 65 to 70% of those in the relevant age group are in the labor force. In India, as per ILO definition, only about 45, 47% are there. So we have 20% less people in the labor force as compared to these other countr…”

“And the third factor which contributed is that we have the lowest manpower cost anywhere in the world. Even China is three X more expensive, right? In terms of cost per delivery, which is why quick commerce doesn't work even in China, because cost per delivery…”

“In the next 25 year period, actually China's working age population is likely to decline about 30%.”

“Most Chinese have, I would say, 80% of their assets in property. So when property prices go down they're not going to be buying stocks.”

“So that's the reason why we really exited most of the positions in China, but we're still looking at China. We think China still has great opportunities going forward.”

“China was a very, very big winner for us and Russia, by the way, we were invested in Russia and that did very well. Then only later that India started coming up and becoming important.”

“Oh yes, definitely. Because you're seeing China's growing at, let's say two or three percent India's growing at seven percent definitely India will overtake China.”

“The average age in India now is about 26, 27, compared to about 37 for China.”

“When we started that emerging markets fund the only markets were open at that time. Were Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore Thailand, and Mexico. That was it. All the other, of course, that time, China was closed. Russia was closed. Most of Latin Amer…”

“The whole battery production in the world is concentrated in China, and they have Control of a lot of the rare earths and minerals which go into this production, which they are weaponizing whenever they feel it is necessary.”

“Well, now the Americans have brought China and Russia much closer, which I think is a strategic mistake from American point of view, because Chinese American thinkers like Brzezinski and others, and earlier also have all argued that you don't want Eurasia to b…”

“In India, we have whistles all the time. So there's some steam is escaping all the time. It makes for a turbulent atmosphere, but in one way it is safe because steam is being let off. In China, no steam is being let off.”

“And they have given Pakistan [526] Rajiv Sikri: The nuclear weapons. [528] Rajiv Sikri: They've given them the technology. [530] Rajiv Sikri: The Chinese gave it to them. [532] Rajiv Sikri: The Americans winked at it.”

“One percent or so of the world ships are built by us. Almost half are built by China. And if you include Japan and Korea, something like 90% or something like that of ships are built by just those three countries.”

“Had we competed with them on equal terms, we would not have been importing British cloth. We would have been exporting cloth much more than China's doing.”

“In my lifetime, we will be the largest or second largest. I think we'll be the largest economy. Simply because China won't be able to keep up because their institutional strength is not so good.”

“And the railways were much more developed railways than China at the time of independence. Look at Chinese railways now and our railways, we are far behind.”

“No, but there's reasonable grounds to believe. that we are in the, we have reached the takeoff stage. It's like China. So China, Deng Xiaoping came in in 1979. Till 1991, nineties, mid nineties, Tiananmen Square, there were doubts. But it was a silent revoluti…”

“High level thesis for me is really India feels like China two decades ago, increasing population, increasing middle-class geopolitical in a super interesting spot where people try to move out of China and move into India.”

“I don't think they can barely manage four to five percent this year.”

“Total industrial R&D, the amount of R&D that Indian companies are doing is seven billion dollars. The total industrial R&D, company R&D that China is doing, three hundred and fifty billion dollars. America almost eight hundred billion dollars.”

“The danger is that we would be a trade colony of China and a tech colony of the U S and we have to find our way out of this scenario.”

“So we have to take some agency away from the children and give it to the parents, because if you were in the West, we would give it to the teachers. If you were in China, we'd give it to the state, you know, but in India, we have to give it to the parents.”

“India had twenty three million babies or so last year, right? And China had nine million.”

“And Joe China may eight to 18, Joe us may nine to five to 2010. Well, India has started in 23, 22, and it'll run through because India, we're slowly. So it'll run for another 15 to 20 years.”

“And then by the end of 24, I think it became clear to people or many people took the call that they don't have the patience to stay or think about more investing in China or stay invested in China so that now India is seeing a benefit. Definitely it's seeing a…”

“If you look at semiconductors, 90%, I don't know if you know this statistic, 90% of chip design goes through India, including the Chinese trips.”

“India has always been in the single digits at best, maybe 10, 15%. I think, I don't think India will go to 30% because I think people have learned a tough lesson in China.”

“There's a sub-flavor of that, which is India to the world BtoB commerce, that's done really well, and I think that, that is benefiting from a lot of supply chain shifting from China to other sources.”

“But we're not seeing anywhere close to the amount of innovation or even applications companies built on innovative infrastructure out of India that we're seeing in the US and to some extent Europe and China as well.”

“China is actually behind, much behind Tesla. Everyone is much, way more, way behind Tesla in terms of the real FSD.”

“It will by 20 30 be, I think, three and a half, four times of US, right? The energy production.”

“The amount of China is building 10 plants every year. 10 nuclear plants every year. And they've been doing it consistently for the last four years. So by 2030, they're going to double their existing nuclear capacity.”

“For the first time this year, China's renewable energy is higher than coal energy.”

“We don't make any LED in India. It's a hundred percent imported from China.”

“Innovation is going to become not just concentrated in one country anymore. It is going to be India. It's going to be China. It's going to be Europe. It's going to be Japan, right? So there's going to be a lot more fragmented innovation that's going to happen.”

“In fact, I think Taiwan was the biggest investor in in China for a long time. I think next only to Japan.”

“We have an opportunity to create Indian companies and the Indian companies should focus on the Indian market first, right? Because this is where you learn how to build products or you learn how to improve on a product, right? You know, quality performance, how…”

“The next big country market available to them is India.”

“I think China will, you know, will be, you know, self-sufficient or at least, you know, make sure that they're not importing from us. So I think that is going to accelerate now.”

“And the US also gives three and a half lakh patents. Now China has reached almost one million patent grants.”

“Invariably, the foreign guys select people who are very dumb, who will just take the tech and manufacture, not try to understand, absorb it like, you know, the China does. So they don't want to absorb it. They would just want to be the dumbest of the dumbest m…”

“I mean, since the software is being sent by China, and if a war happens, I'm going to convert every EV vehicle into a weapon. Go crash into this segment, go crash into that segment.”

“One of the things that has emerged very clearly after Operation Sindhu, Is the open Chinese involvement in in Pakistan's military and offensive and defensive capabilities.”

“There's a slow de-dollarization which is underway. Very cautious, very careful because nobody wants to get on the wrong side of America. But like India or China or Russia or other countries are trading in their national currencies”

“If you take our pharmaceuticals, the active pharmaceutical ingredients come from China.”

“Earlier we used to talk about two fronts. Now it's just one coordinated front with Pakistan as the lead player.”

“They're calling back their engineers, technicians who are working on iPhone production because India is emerging as an iPhone thing.”

“But Russia will not, ah, unthinkingly support India. They also have their interests to look at, ah, whether it is vis-a-vis China, which is now increasingly influential on Russia. Or, ah, Pakistan, which remains, because of its geography, a very, very importan…”

“India last year processed about four to 4.5 billion shipments. China did one thirty billion shipments.”

“They spend today three percent of GDP on R and D. We spend .6%.65%. They are five times bigger. So they're spending 22 time more on R and D than India's doing.”

“China has done really well, but China is very brittle. Lot of pressures have built in China. Chances of a explosion happening within China are fairly high.”

“China will overtake America by 2035. Yeah. If they turn, transhold, you know, may or may not happen, but if they turn, transhold, you know, China will be better than U.S.”

“I see, 50 years from now, we are, we will definitely overtake China. We will definitely overtake China.”

“Japan was the first country that affect, that was affected by this ban, and I believe that they are in a far better position now, because they've diversified, they figured out what to do. They're in a slightly better position than all the other countries now. …”

“They did an embargo on the export of rare earth-based magnets and a few other components in April of 25. So that led to shutting down Several companies all around the world.”

“The processes and the machinery for extraction And making the final application magnets in our case. Ah, both, ah, China introduced an embargo about three years ago on the export of that machinery. Long before they actually did the embargo on the red earth mag…”

“China has close to 50% of the known ore in this world. Then I think it is Brazil. Incidentally, India is the third largest.”

“So I think within this century which belongs to India, I think next 10 years could be India's best years because After that, also, India will keep compounding and keep growing, but I think your base effect will start catching up with you as it is catching up w…”