Joining us in a special chat today, we have Akash Palkhiwala, COO and CFO of Qualcomm. He's first speaking to us about deepening their India presence, also with AI, with 6G rollout, local partnerships, and much more. And then he's also talking to us about how he's balancing that dual role of being a COO and CFO with aggressive growth plans and financial discipline as well. Akash, welcome, welcome to ET Now.
Thank you for having me here, Shani.
Qualcomm has been vocal about, you know, your partnership with the Tata Group. How is that progressing? If you can give us an insight into that.
So we have a very broad partnership with the Tata Group. So we work with Tata Electronics, we work with Tata Motors, we work with Titan, we work with Tejas Networks, we work with Croma, all their different companies. And with each of these, as Qualcomm diversifies, as we go outside smartphones and we establish a very strong beachhead across all the other different areas, Tata Group is kind of a natural partner for us. One of the key focus areas for us with them has now been on Tata Electronics. As manufacturing starts in India from a packaging perspective, from a foundry perspective, for making SIPs and modules, we think there's this unique opportunity for us to work with them. And so we're very excited, looking forward to it.
And as Qualcomm is progressing from handsets to, you know, being in the entire ecosystem, connected ecosystem, what changes when it comes to this partnership?
You know, it's very interesting if you think about what is happening with Qualcomm. We started off with phones, but then all the devices that are at the edge started changing in a way that they wanted the technology that phones have. So if you think about cars, the inside of a car became effectively like a smartphone, and so that needed technology from Qualcomm. The car got connected to the cloud, it needed technology from Qualcomm. One of the areas that we're incredibly excited about is wearable AI. So think about a pair of glasses, or something you put in your ears, or something that's on your wrist, or a locket, or a brooch. It is a device that can see what you can see, it can hear what you can hear, and it is a device you can have a conversation with.
So imagine where you have a device on you and you just look at something and say, 'What is this?' And it'll tell you what it is. If you look at a QR code and say, 'Pay 100 rupees for this code,' it'll make the payment for you. You could say, 'Just remind me to take medicine at 4 p.m.,' and it will do that. Or you could just ask for directions to go somewhere. So there is this incredible amount of change that is happening with AI, and all these devices at the edge, we think of them as becoming carriers for an AI agent. And Qualcomm is very excited to partner with Tata Group and other companies really to make that vision happen.
And globally, when it comes to wearable technology, you also have partnerships with platforms like Meta for Oakley and Ray-Ban Meta.
You know, every major company that is active in the new AI wearables area uses Qualcomm. So very excited.
Yeah. Now speaking about R&D centers in the country, you have four R&D centers in the country. How are they contributing to, you know, Qualcomm's ambitions globally?
You know, India offices have been a very, very important part of our engineering effort for a very long period of time. So actually, I was involved 20 years ago when we bought this small company called Spike Technologies in Bangalore to set the beachhead for our engineering efforts in India. And from that, we've gone from Bangalore to Hyderabad to Chennai to different parts of Delhi, and then we're going to expand into other areas as well. I mean, there's just so much talent across the country, not just in tier one cities, but tier two, tier three cities. And so it presents this unique opportunity for Qualcomm that as we grow, we'll be able to leverage that talent across the board.
