Opinion
Sharma: India Risks Becoming a US Tech Colony and China Trade Colony
“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.”
Opinion
Sharma: Global Fast Payment Momentum Belongs to Brazil's PIX, Not UPI
“Today in the fast payment world, the momentum is not with UPI is with PIX. It's a Brazilian system, which is inspired by UPI as they say. And but they've done a very good job of the basics of taking it out.”
Opinion
Sharma: Relying on Visa and Mastercard gives US government potential kill-switch control
“If you use a Visa MasterCard, the US government will potentially have strings that they can use to control one day, perhaps even shut the system down if needed.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sharma: US Big Tech Organized Efforts To Erect AI Entry Barriers
“Big tech had a well known, although they won't admit it, but the fact is that they had an organized effort to restrict AI.
To their own set of people.
They said, let's erect entry barriers so that , right?
This is they will never accept it, but this was a real…”
Opinion
Sharma: India's CSIR Is Defunct And Academic Research Is A Hobby
“That doesn't happen today, because CSIR, I'm sorry to be so blunt, is defunct.
Our academic research is mostly hobby research, and so we have a problem.
We don't have the research infrastructure.”
Opinion
Sharma: India Should Give Preferential Treatment To Domestic AI Builders
“Now, of course, this means that we should give some preferential treatment to Indian model builders over other model builders.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Sharma: Tejas Networks will replace Huawei globally within a year
“What if I tell you that a year from now, it'll be Tejas. And if it is Tejas, then you have to take me out for lunch. And if it is not Tejas, I'll take all of you out for lunch, right? As having lost the bed.”
Opinion
Sharma: India's startup bottleneck is entrepreneur mindset, not capital or market
“Our choke point is no longer whether the ecosystem is ready, whether the market is ready, whether the investors are ready. Our, frankly, our entrepreneurs are not ready. And we have to therefore help them be ready.”
Insight
Sharma: Tech Power Drives Economic and Military Dominance
“Today, you know, it's safe to say that if you have Economic power and military power, but no technology power. It doesn't count for a lot. And if you have technology power, you'll be able to accumulate the other two parts relatively easily.”
Insight
Sharma: Government Tech Is Only DPI If It Enables Private Innovation
“They think every open source project is a DPI. They think every government tech is DPI, which is not true. Some government tech is DPI. If it enables private entrepreneurship or private innovation to happen on type on top, some open sources DPI. And all DPI is…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sharma: No meaningful foreign country has adopted UPI domestically
“There is literally, literally no meaningful country which has adopted UPI as a domestic payment system. Within their country.”
Disclosure
Sharma: Indian Overconfidence Caused UPI To Lag Brazil's PIX Globally
“And that required us to open up the protocol in a very structured way. We didn't do that. You know, we are doing that now. But Brazilians with Pix did that I think in July or August of and so we got a little cocky and overconfident about our own momentum in th…”
Assertion Partly supported
Sharma: Facebook Used Indian Policy To Defend US Net Neutrality
“And the same Facebook, which had insisted on removing net neutrality here was now defending net neutrality here using the three page policy that we had created to basically preserve our net neutrality.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sharma: SEBI Mutual Fund Rules Drove India's Retail Stock Market Boom
“And the fact that stock market is popped up is because lots of new money is coming in. And because that system provides clarity and good regulation of the mutual fund ecosystem in a way, very few countries do it today.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sharma: GST Liability Chain Architecture Will Be Vital For AI Regulation
“So we understand these tax liability chains now better than anything else. And that will be important for AI. We'll come back to AI a little later in AI regulation in a very big way.”
Opinion
Sharma: India Handled Aadhaar Regulatory Philosophy Poorly Before Improving With UPI
“And we have we did a very poor job of that with Aadhaar, better job with UPI, better still with Depa.”
Opinion
Sharma: Indian fintech struggles because stakeholders abandoned the three-lane regulatory framework
“Part of our pain in the fintech system is that neither the fintechs nor the banks, unregulated, regulated, and the regulator have remained true to this three lane model while everybody says this is the right model.”
Assertion Contradicted
Sharma: Relying On Visa And Mastercard Means A 1% Foreign Tax
“The fact is that when your economy is reliant on Visa MasterCard, you're paying a one person tax to a third country, right?”
Assertion Supported
Sharma: Around 50 of India's 120 unicorns are domiciled abroad
“Probably 50 of our 120 unicorns are technically not Indian, right?”
Opinion
Sharma: India Gets An A In Tech But D-Minus In Business
“We do well with the technology architecture, you know, protocols and platforms and how to think about them. I would say we get an A there. We do pretty poorly B minus for the regulatory architecture on top of that. We do our ecosystem building organizations, w…”
What-if
Sharma: Antitrust Action Against Internet Explorer Enabled Google And Facebook
“So about 23 years ago, had they not challenged the monopoly of Internet Explorer,
I can tell you Google would not be an important company it is today.
You know, you won't have had Facebook as an independent company that you have today.
You know, even the curre…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sharma: India Lacks An Aligned National Game Plan For AI
“Now your question is, do we have a game plan like that for AI, right?
And is it understood by all the three stakeholders?
And the short answer is not yet.
We don't have a game plan.
We know some elements of the game plan but we don't
We know those elements are…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sharma: Strict HIPAA Regulations Will Hinder US Healthcare AI Startups
“Furthermore, this is one place where there is Difficult regulation called HIPAA in the US that will prevent US startups being able to do well.”
Insight
Sharma: Regulating Data And Distribution Allows For Liberal AI Application Layers
“By looking at the bookends on the distribution side and at the data side, We may allow for a fairly liberal system in the middle.”
