India’s human capital is a key to global tech and innovation: Mohandas Pai

India is the only place in the world with the human capital capable of supporting global technology and innovation on an unprecedented scale, said Mohandas Pai, Chairperson of Manipal Global Education and former board member at Infosys, emphasizing how this can be a force multiplier for the United States.

"The United States' domination in technology on a large scale globally is due to the India connection and the work that they do in the labs and everywhere here. Going forward, the next five years are going to be the most exciting for technology, and India and the United States are going to work closely together," he asserted during a session at India Global Innovation Connect (IGIC) 2024.

Discussing the ingredients necessary for innovation—human, physical, and financial capital—Pai highlighted that India has 7 million people currently working in technology. Of these, 5.6 million are in the export industry for software, working in R&D labs and multiple other areas. About 500,000 are part of the startup ecosystem, and the rest are in the local ecosystem. India has the second-largest pool of high-quality trained people in technology in the world after the United States, with 2.3 million in Bangalore alone, second only to the United States, which has 10 million.

China also has a large talent pool, but Pai clarified that China has a nearly $20 trillion economy and its technology workforce is largely confined within its own national firewall.

The conversation took place between Rajeev Banduni, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of OpenI Partners, India; Sanjeev Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), India; and Claude Smadja of Smadja & Smadja Strategic Advisory, Switzerland. During the discussion, Smadja emphasized what makes India's innovation model unique.

"Human capital is India’s huge strength," Pai asserted, noting that the largest influx of technology professionals to America every year is from India. "This demonstrates the strength of our workforce. Among the top 10 IT service companies by market value, the top 5 are Indian. Out of 3.2 million employees in these top 10 companies, 2.3 million are Indians."

Shedding light on the physical infrastructure of India, Pai also said that India is a digital-first country, and it has built digital public infrastructure on a scale that nobody else has achieved. "Our payments system has already reached 100 billion transactions; the scale is tremendous," he added.

Despite India’s vast tech talent, Pai noted a shortfall in financial capital, mentioning that in the past decade, about $145 billion has been invested in India. "China invested $835 billion, America invested $2.3 trillion, so capital is not there, and that's the biggest constraint for India."

However, Pai said that funding for research has to come from the public sector, pointing out that the government has promised to put $6-7 billion to work over five years, and that should happen.

"India also leads in people trained in AI. So going forward, in the next five years, a huge amount of innovation is coming out of India," he said in conclusion.