Well, I think we are — I've already said that we are all awaiting our approvals. I think I am significantly ahead in the queue from him. I applied five years back. I have my ground networks ready for the last three years. My satellites have been hovering over India for the last five years. We don't have the permission. So, I mean, we'll be very happy to get it at least a few days before him.
Therefore, I would say, again at the cost of reputation, that India does become a place which can draw a lot of investment. And the good news is, smaller countries, whether it's Singapore or Qatar or the UAE, they have so much capital to deploy which they need to deploy outside, and that's where I think there's become a very strong symbiotic relationship between Qatar and India, India and the UAE, India and Saudi, India and Singapore. And more importantly, I would say, the new wave of bilateral trade agreements.
India has done its trade agreements with New Zealand, with Australia, recently with the UK, which has come into action a few days back. Europe is about to be signed. Canada is in advanced stage. The US is a question mark. I think that is helping India also go up on the trade factor.
Well, the question mark is very clearly because the US, being the largest partner with India, is still a work in progress. I think that when you have over a hundred billion dollars of trade going out of India to the US, and there are higher tariffs or, you know, questions around what next, it does cause a problem.
No. I think the world is far, far too interdependent. There's no question. Going back to the Wild West is not a possibility anymore. But one warning that has come through this process is that heavy dependence on one country, one source, is not good. For a long period of time, I think the world let China become very strong in almost everything — from APIs in pharmaceuticals to the most critical components of the automobiles, to, you know, electronics, name it. You just let one country develop so much, and everybody was very happy that China produces high quality at low cost. And when the geopolitics started to happen, I think we are seeing those lines getting fractured, and those interdependencies are becoming a big question mark.
If your trade imbalance with China is on a level which was a hundred billion dollars a year and you want to bring it down to fifty, you can't, because most of your industry is dependent on getting components and raw materials from China. That change must happen. It'll take time; it'll take a few decades. But I think the globe recognizes that while we'll remain interdependent, you cannot be overdependent.
…countries. What do you want to do next?
Well, I think telecom and digital is really our main forte, and that's what we understand and, you know, live and breathe. Our plan is to expand that across our territories. I mean, in India, as I said, we're expanding more, adding more digital services. A new vertical that has been added now is financial services, which is not usual for a telecom company to do, but we believe in India, given our very large customer base…
…the brand affinity, the loyalty that we have, we could be a big player in financial services. So that's a new addition that we have done. In Africa, we are already very successful in financial services; we have a very large vertical called Airtel Money, which is actually, you know, providing all the services that a bank would normally do in the absence of banking infrastructure in Africa. That is playing the part. In India, that's not the case, but there are lots of young people who want lending for the first time — consumer lending — and we know our cohort of customers and the signals that we get in terms of how much they can afford and pay. Based on that, we have now started to lend to our customers, consumer loans. I mean, that's a new activity.
I would like to do more telecom in different parts of the globe. In Africa we are in 14 countries; we look for opportunities there. We are in the UK now. Will there be more opportunities in the future in Europe? I never say never.
Never say never. So I'm going to take that as a yes.
