Good evening ladies and gentlemen. What a pleasure to have Mr. Murthy here again. I remember a year and a half back, Dr. Mahal and I were discussing for the Asia Economic Dialogue which the Pune International Center hosts on an annual basis with the Ministry of External Affairs, and we were brainstorming who would be the ideal... if God granted your dream, what would that be? And I said, get Mr. Narayana Murthy. And this was just after COVID, so I said he's going to say yes, but he'll say I'll come on Zoom, which was natural for COVID. And I was honestly shocked when he said I'll come in person. So I had something else to do that day, I thought Zoom we can do from anywhere in the world. So I rushed back to Pune and we had this absolutely delightful conversation which I won't get into now because that conversation has been the subject of so many social media pluses and minuses that that would take a whole lifetime to recount at this point of time. And Mr. Murthy of course very close to me and my wife because he and Sudha ji have been traveling with us, working with us for almost three decades. So pleasure sir to have you here with us. Thank you so much for coming. So I have six questions, so I'll start with the first one. First is very general, Mr. Murthy, where do you think the world is today and where do you think India is vis-a-vis what the world is doing?
Yes, well, the world has gone back to a bipolar world. We have the US, the true superpower with approximately $30 trillion of GDP on the one hand, and second, China with its 19.5, 19.6 trillion growing at a very fast pace with a desire to overtake us. And the whole world in some way is divided into two blocks. We have the US leading the block where many countries including India are a part of, India, Europe, you know, many parts of South America and Australia, they are part of. And on the other hand we have China with Russia playing a second figure, and many of the South Asian countries and African nations and some South American nations. In other words, we have gone back to the world of the 80s before the Soviet Union. But this time it is different. At that point of time there was a mirage that Soviet Union was a very powerful nation, and we all knew once it split up that its economic power, which is generally more lasting than the political power, was not as strong as many people thought. On the other hand, China, no matter what dimension you want to look at, has continued to perform very impressively. That's one part of the global order. The second part of the global order is the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The US and the Western European nations have been siding with Ukraine. On the other hand, China has sat on the fence. India has demonstrated its independence of mind in a very positive way by doing what is in the best interest of our country. I think this is something truly extraordinary. This is the first time we have seen such a thing happening. We don't know how this will end, though President Putin has said that he would like to discuss the Ukraine issue with President Trump when he takes over on January 20th or so. So there is a possibility that this second thing may get sorted out. Now coming to India, I think for the first time since the economic reforms, we have seen India growing at an impressive base, even though last quarter at 5.4% was somewhat disappointing to most Indians. But under the Prime Ministership of Shri Modi, India has done remarkably well in terms of its economic growth, in terms of building infrastructure, in terms of taking the right political stand on global issues, etc. There's a lot of confidence amongst youngsters. In my own middle-class locality in Jayanagar, Bangalore, I see several small restaurants, new barber shops, new clinics, new roadside vendors selling apples, oranges, you know, peas, etc., which once upon a time were considered as being possible only for the well-to-do. So there is a new confidence, there is a new hope, there is a new wish. This is what I would say, both on the world side and on the Indian side.
Well, thank you Mr. Murthy. I think that's nuanced but very correct in terms of the optimism. And now of course we have a leader coming into power in the most powerful nation of the world who has openly said that he does not believe in climate change. One of his colleagues has said fossil fuels are the future. So in this kind of a situation, where's the world going? And I'll preface it with one point. I mean, I remember last NASSCOM, the annual technology leadership forum, we had invited Mr. Vimal Kapur who was the then Chief Operating Officer of Honeywell, and we asked Vimal to do this fireside chat like the one we're doing. And just after that, literally two weeks after that, he became the global CEO. And Vimal is an amazing person, was also once upon a time the MD of Honeywell Automation, a role that I think my friend Ashish held very recently. And if you look at the way Honeywell is approaching climate change, A, there's a very aggressive Net Zero target, B, they've clearly demarcated the businesses into Aerospace, Automation, and Energy Transition. So here's one company which is prepared for that. Question to you sir is, are Indian corporates really aware of the ramifications of sustainability and climate change? A, and B, with so much of documentation and the fear of too much of legislation, etc., are we headed in the right direction as far as sustainability in the corporate sector is concerned?
Well, there is a greater and greater awareness that this is the only planet we have. Professor Godrej is there, he realized it long time before any of us even knew the word sustainability. And to some extent, both at the federal government level and at the corporate level, there is an attempt to make progress in sustainability. For example, at the Paris Agreement where it was enunciated that we have to reduce our emissions by 45% in order not to allow the global temperature to go beyond 2°C, and ideally we want it not to go beyond 1.5°C. UK committed to about 68% reduction, France committed to 55% by 2030, US committed about 45% with where it was in 2005, and I think India too has committed to 45% compared to 2005. These are all good things. Now let's get to the actual realization of that wonderful desire. India as of date produces approximately about 90 GW, to be precise I think 89 GW of solar power, and overall renewable energy which includes of course hydroelectric power is somewhere around 170 GW out of a total of 450 GW of power that we generate in India. Now for us to get to 45% reduction by 2030 and for us to get to the figure of 275 GW of renewable energy, I think we still have some work to do. But looking at the enthusiasm of everybody, both the politicians and the bureaucrats in the government, looking at people like Jamshed who have started new initiatives, I do believe that we are doing the right job and my hope is that we will indeed live up to that. And the most important thing for us to remember is that a country like India and parts of Africa are extremely vulnerable to the temperature rise. One of the projections says that if we didn't control it, then in about 20 to 25 years there could be places in India which will become uninhabitable, have become very difficult to live, it takes a long time to commute place to place, the pollution levels are going up. Of course, not near Delhi where it has reached 700 to 1000, Bangalore had reached 70 or so which is about the upper limit of 50 for habitable cities. So we in India, we have to, particularly the corporate sector, when I say corporate sector I don't mean... I mean both the private and the public sector units have to keep this in mind. We have to fully cooperate with our politicians and bureaucrats. People like Jamshed are all leading this. As you know, Infosys was ranked among the top eight in the world in terms of sustainability achievement, this was as early as in 2012 or so. We continue the work. So I am positive that the brilliant minds of the corporate world, our well-intentioned politicians, and our highly concerned bureaucracy will come together and sort out this problem. But we must all understand one thing: we Indians are used to doing everything at the last minute, we are quite used to it. So therefore even if we do not see some extraordinary frenetic activity, but as we near the deadline of 2030, I think our leaders will make it happen.
That's very encouraging sir. But I mean, as you know, Prime Minister Modi has talked about 2070 as net zero for the country. That's still a long time away, but as you rightly said, everybody has to chip in, whether it's government, corporate, to make that happen. I'm also delighted that so many entrepreneurs are getting into the whole sustainability space. I mean, just to call out two in this room, there's a wonderful group called Kotak which is actually working on the water, highest from the rivers, taking them out, making them convertible into products which can be totally sustainable. So I think these are initiatives which gives us a lot of hope. And of course what Pranati and Angita are doing with Sustain and Saaale, which is right from LCA to ESG to working with corporations like the PCMC to make sure that we're measuring the activities by every household in terms of climate change and probably giving better tax incentives than just giving money, putting money into people's pockets. So I think there's enough happening. I'm going to combine the next two questions Mr. Murthy by saying that look, you mentioned Infosys, obviously one of the market leaders today. We're very, very proud of the $220 billion software services exports industry and I think it's amazing to see the progress that is being made. But in the area of sustainability, I mean I mentioned Sustain and Saaale is building digital platforms to measure your progress, but do you see technology and AI play a major role in sustainability achievements in the years to come?
Well, technology is extremely important. I'll come to AI later. The most important technology that I believe would be, or three, the first one is what Jamshed is doing, and that is LDES, long duration storage equipment, because if we want to efficiently use solar power, we have to overcome the drawbacks by inventing technologies that can store the solar power over a long period of time. That's very important. A lot of research that is going on at least in American universities which I'm rather familiar with, and I do believe that there must be some work going on in India too and in the research laboratories of people like Jamshed. Second part that we need to do is learn to use carbon avoidance technology. Ideally, hydrogen, who knows, we may be successful in using fusion. That's probably the Holy Grail. If the world were to succeed in the recently concluded experiment going on in the US in creating energy out of fusion, all of you know better than I do that that's how sun produces its remarkable amount of energy. If we did that, then that will solve a big problem. The third technology is of course hydrogen technology. I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs in India who are working on it, and in the US, Europe, Japan, everywhere people are working on using hydrogen and some have gone beyond the experimental state. And the next technology that we should focus on is what is called direct air capture technologies. That is, if you put that equipment in Delhi at critical places, the pollution level, the carbon level should come down from 700 to ideally 50. Now as you people know, this is almost like a moonshot. President Biden has committed huge amounts of money to bring down the cost of direct air capture to approximately about $100 US per ton of carbon energy, but we're still not there. But knowing how robust scientific research and technology research in the USA, I believe that they will get there. And once that direct air capture technology becomes proven, then I do believe that they will. But beyond that, your earlier company Honeywell and others, you know better than I do, are working on what is called IT-OT convergence. IT stands for information technology and OT stands for operational technology. We all know it's all about collecting data, it's all about analyzing it, it's all about understanding patterns, etc., etc. And we also know, because earlier we used the word process, that's why I said analyst was earlier, what is happening in OT in its new avatar is it is bringing in the concept of metaverse, which is basically a virtual reality based technology for better man-machine interaction, while allowing the machine to control the equipment to bring down carbon, to operate those machines efficiently to reduce the amount of carbon, etc. Emerson is a very successful company in that area, Honeywell, they're all doing it. And this is, I call it metaverse, because in some way we have to learn to interact in the virtual reality world so that we can indeed help these OT devices perform well and we play our part. But my greatest hope really is on reducing the cost of solar power panels. As you know, China is the leader in that. In fact, I think all of you know that it cost approximately 100 watts for certain unit of solar in 1975. Today I believe it's somewhere around $3. From $100 it has come down to $3. So we have made a huge progress in reducing the cost of solar panels. But there is another aspect of solar power which you people know better than I do, and that is the efficiency of solar power conversion is still between 18 and 21, 22%. Now imagine somebody brilliant in Jamshed's company were to come out with a technology that enhances it to 40%, we would have doubled it. The second thing is you must also realize that India is very fortunate because we have exposure to, I may be wrong but that's what I remember, to approximately 5,000 trillion watts of solar energy. And today we generate only 89 GW. Multiply it and you will get whatever, that's not a big deal. So therefore India has an extraordinary opportunity to use solar power. And that's where my humble request to our IITs and IISc is to look at perhaps enhancing the solar power conversion to a much higher percentage than what it is now. Coming to AI, see AI will help us in analyzing large amounts of data. In this context, that's the best way that we can use AI, because AI will throw patterns out, will help our research professionals to understand where the problems are, where there are gains possible, etc., etc. I am told, again I may be wrong, that about 40% of the time of research professionals in sustainability is spent on analyzing large data and coming out with this package. Imagine using AI, using machine learning, as all of you know, machine learning is nothing primarily regression, you know, a large number of independent variables and dependent variables. These are multiple regression algorithms that will take that almost impossible for a human being to do, but even for machines to work. And also we must also remember that AI itself will require a lot of energy. That when you want to use large amounts of data or even LLMs, large language models, you need so much of electrical power. So therefore what we need today is for our research professionals in the area of renewable energy research to use AI very judiciously to come out with new patterns, new correlations, etc., etc., so that we can indeed quickly get to analyze all the data that we produce. Of course, one doesn't need to say that AI will also, thanks to the supervised algorithms, it will help us improve the efficiency of our electric power stations, our renewable energy platforms, all of that. So together I do believe that both the general technology and AI will help India a lot if our IITs and IISc and the R&D departments of large corporations were to focus on a few of these problems with a laser focus. Let me stop here.
