The Exchanges

Q And how has your father's career, you know, shaped your decisions?

A It has not really shaped my decisions, uh, in important ways. Uh, he has been a role model for me, of course. Uh, but, uh, you know, he of course was in the IAS. He also wanted me to take the UPSC, but I chose, uh, to be in the private sector. Uh, he of course stayed in India. I went off to the US after IIT, and I was there for 25 years before I came back. Uh, so in that sense, I followed a very different career from his. Uh, but there is a very important way in which, you know, his, uh, life and the lives of, uh, other people in the family have had a very important influence on me, and that is in service to the nation. Uh, so my grandfather, my nanaji, Sri N.C. Srivastav ji, was an ICS officer. Uh, in fact, he's the one who built the Bhilai steel plant. Uh, other members of my family have been in the IES, the IPS, uh, income tax, et cetera. So many, many members of my family have actually devoted themselves, dedicated themselves to the country, as has my father. So watching all of these people, watching that generation really help build up India. As I said, my grandfather built the Bilhai steel plant with help from the Russians. You are very inspired to serve the country as well. So in that sense, you know, my father's life and his, uh, his political career Uh, has had a very significant influence in me because it's been an inspiration, uh, that there is a point in your life w…

AI assessment note: “It has not really shaped my decisions, uh, in important ways.”

Q And it, it must have been a huge execution effort, right? Because you had seen it, worked in it closely, but, you know, fighting an election for the first time, and, uh, in your mind, I believe you hadn't prepared for it because you were on the ripe of your corporate career.

A I was working at Omidia Network when this whole, uh, situation started to develop, uh, and of course I left and, you know, got into the whole campaigning process and everything else, and then, Of course, the elections were in May, April, May of 2014. So yes, it was a very, uh, interesting, uh, and novel set of experiences for me, but not a complete, uh, sort of new thing in the sense that, of course, as I said, in my father's previous elections, I had been deeply involved and 2008 and nine, uh, I had really, really worked very, very hard तो सब कुछ जो आदमी चुनाव में करता है और्गनाइजेशन विवस्था का सब बंदोबस्त कारेकरताओं के साथ बैठा इवन पब्लिक स्पीचेज यह सब तो मैंने पहले किया ही हुआ था लेकिन हां

AI assessment note: “not a complete, uh, sort of new thing in the sense that”

Q And, and how are we planning to get that?

A Like, so there's good news for venture capitalists like you, uh, in that Siddharth, uh, we will need to mobilize this through four or five different sources for the private sector. Number one, venture capital has a very important role to play. And I have just written a book called India's green startups, uh, which of course are VC backed. Uh, and if we can scale up these green companies like a blue smart, a battery smart, a Kisan connect, Achyaps, fantastic companies, fantastic businesses. If they scale up, they will grow, they will decarbonize. Decarbonization, in fact, is Siddharth, their business model. So if we back them with venture capital and we enable them to scale, they will automatically start decarbonizing and accelerating our green future. So that's a wonderful way of doing it through venture capital. Second source is private equity. And again, in private equity, when you take somebody like, ah, Blue Smart that's growing, they almost have 9000 electric vehicles right now. When they start to scale up, we need private equity to come in and support them. Venture capital is in the startup phase, but when you get to the growth phase, that's when we need lots and lots of private equity as well. Third source has to be infrastructure investments. We need very significant infrastructure investments. We've got to build out renewables. 500 gigawatt of renewables is what the Ho…

AI assessment note: “we will need to mobilize this through four or five different sources”

Q One, you know, very important point I want to touch upon is with, you know, the US President Donald Trump getting into power. Is this the green mission going to get accelerated, de-accelerated?

A It's going to have an impact, and, uh, it is, uh, something that we have to deal with for sure, Siddharth. But the way I phrase it is to say profits Trump politics. Profits trump politics. The very good news on green technologies is that they have become very cost effective now. Today, the cost of round-the-clock solar is actually lower than the cost of coal in many cases, particularly in India. Today, the cost of electric vehicles is lower than the cost of petrol and diesel vehicles. So we are in a situation where we have to adopt We are worried about green technologies, not just because it's good for the environment or we are worried about carbon emissions. That of course should get priced in if we were looking at societal cost. But leave aside societal cost, just purely on private cost for you. If you have to buy an electric two wheeler versus buying a petrol two wheeler, just for you, independent of carbon, air pollution, all of that. You will still find it is better and cheaper on a life cycle basis, total cost of ownership basis. It's actually cheaper for you to have an electric two wheeler. Same way for a discount. It's actually cheaper to have solar power than it is to have coal power. So profits and cost effectiveness will take you very far. And for the next 1015 years, as far as India is concerned, enough The problem is what happens after that. Then 10 or 15 years lat…

AI assessment note: “profits Trump politics. The very good news on green technologies is that they have become”

Q And do you see many folks around you, both in government and private, making it the number one priority like you have done?

A I think the Honorable Prime Minister is very committed to it, and he has in multiple occasions spoken about it and how important it is. And obviously that leadership, that vision on his part, uh, has permeated through, uh, government. And, uh, I think everybody in government is very focused on this goal, and it's very important now For the people of India, and businesses in India, and investors in India, also to be very focused on this goal. We are doing it to accelerate our shared green future. Please recognize that this is not an ESG thing. This is not, hey, where is someone doing something. No. This is the question of your life. Is it your life or not? Is it your children's life or not? It's as basic as that. When you get into a car, do you put on your seatbelt?

AI assessment note: “I think everybody in government is very focused on this goal”

Q But, but this is huge amount of work. I'm so excited, sir, that you, what are you going to do in the climate?

A We didn't talk about Air India. Now, Air India's privatization, that was also the honourable PM sahab that we had to do it. Arun Ji's inspiration was to do it. We also had to do a lot of innovation. We created a separate SPV where we took all of the non-core assets of Air India. The land, the buildings, you know, various things like that. We put all the non-core, non-operating assets of Air India into this special SPV. Then we worked out so that the workers, the unions of Air India were going to get security. They were going to get their necessary guarantees. So we took care of that. And then number three, you could actually bid on the amount of debt that you were assuming as opposed to the equity that you were going to pay. That also required a tremendous amount of innovation and a long policy process to get us there. And that's how we got Air India privatized. And now you see how well Air India is doing the wonderful work that the Tatas are doing with Air India. And we will create an incredible, uh, airline in India, which will provide us a variety of domestic services for sure through Air India Express, but we will potentially create one of the great long haul airlines of the world. It's a great long-haul airlines.

AI assessment note: “We didn't talk about Air India. Now, Air India's privatization”