Rajan Anandan, the Managing Director of venture capital firm Sequoia India, AS Rajgopal, CEO and Managing Director at Nxtgen Datacenter and Cloud Technologies, and Pooja Rao, co-founder and head of research and development at Qure.ai, engaged in a discussion with Benjamin Parkins, Mumbai Correspondent for the Financial Times, exploring India’s growing interest in technology. The session, titled ‘New Technologies: Will they transform India?’ delved into various aspects of the tech landscape.
Rao highlighted the surge in interest in healthcare during the pandemic, driven by the success of vaccines and resulting in significant investments. The shift towards staying at home created opportunities in new market areas such as digital health, telemedicine, fitness wearables, mental health app services, neurotechnology, and continuous glucose monitors. According to Rao, what has manifested in India so far is just the beginning.
Discussing the readiness of digital infrastructure for growth, Rajgopal expressed that the current infrastructure is limited to a few cities. He emphasized the importance of establishing a robust edge computing network for local data computation as a crucial first step.
Anandan emphasized the need for data privacy and security regulations that empower consumers, ensuring they have full control over their data. Rajgopal echoed this sentiment, stating that global companies would likely engage in self-regulation before government regulations catch up. Regarding privacy regulations, Rao pointed out that the Personal Data Protection Bill emphasizes the physical localization of data, but there is a lack of clarity on its implementation.
