With over 100 million cryptocurrency householders and a blockchain market projected to develop exponentially, India stands at a technological crossroads on its 79th Independence Day—will rising utilized sciences like blockchain and artificial intelligence digitise present strategies, or basically rework how India’s 1.4 billion residents work, make investments, and assemble wealth?
In a thought-provoking reside dialog, Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, sat down with Deepak Garg, Founding father of SatoshiWealth and AnywhereJobs, to decode how AI and blockchain may reshape India’s monetary trajectory and kind the nation’s subsequent leap forward.
Garg, a serial entrepreneur and investor, believes India ought to assess world demographic and monetary shifts sooner than charting its technological discourse.
“We’re a country the place the youthful inhabitants is rising yearly, with 20 million youths turning into a member of the job age. Whereas the world is ageing, India is turning into youthful. There’s an ageing phenomenon occurring on this planet. There’s a demographic shift occurring on this planet over the next 10 years,” he explains.
The abilities migration various
Primarily based on Garg, about 300 million jobs will most likely be created over the next 10 to twenty years inside the West on account of ageing populations—a amount that just about mirrors youthful people moving into India’s job market all through the equivalent interval.
Calling it a “expertise migration corridor”, he believes that it lays a structured pathway for Indian employees to entry options internationally.
“A truck driver in India earns $300-400 per 30 days, whereas a truck driver in Europe earns $3,000-4,000 month-to-month. That could be a 10X leap. That could be a gifted migration corridor of a truck driver,” he explains.
It was the equivalent imaginative and prescient that led Garg to found AnywhereJobs—a skilling and employment platform designed to provide world work options for professional Indian professionals.
“Remaining yr, we despatched 3,000 truck drivers to Germany. Each of them is sending once more $2,000 to $2,500 residence. Their lives are altering totally. Their kids are getting educated in greater schools. They’re developing properties of their villages. Plenty of them, after working for 3-4 years, come once more and retire, or prepare their very personal enterprise,” he gives.
Furthermore, he highlights how fairly a couple of European worldwide areas, the US, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Japan are actively in the hunt for experience on account of age gaps.
Garg is biggest recognized for developing logistics company Rivigo and turning it into one in every of many nation’s quickest unicorns between 2014 and 2017. A former McKinsey advertising guide with eight years of experience, Garg holds ranges from IIT Kanpur and IIM Lucknow.
Fueling AI with vitality vitality
All through his Independence Day sort out within the current day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi acknowledged India’s first domestically manufactured semiconductor chip might be launched by the highest of 2025. He moreover launched plans to increase India’s nuclear vitality period functionality 10-fold over the next 20 years.
Stressing that vitality infrastructure ought to be the primary focus for any nation developing its private AI infrastructure, Garg says, “We’re getting right into a world the place AI and blockchain are the model new arc of evolution. Energy is the basic international cash of all of this. The additional vitality a nation has, the additional extremely efficient it’s.”
Garg extra urges India to take inspiration from China, highlighting it as a serious occasion of how a nation can shortly develop its vitality functionality via sustained protection focus and large-scale investments.
“Nonetheless, our manufacturing continues to be not rising on the equivalent tempo as China’s. [It] has elevated its vitality manufacturing by 20% last yr. The amount of photo voltaic vitality China has put in inside the last yr is 464 GW, which is almost 5 cases the general lifetime put in functionality of picture voltaic in India,” he added.
Within the meantime, the nation is on monitor to only about double its nuclear vitality functionality by 2040. A up to date report by China Nuclear Energy Affiliation (CNEA) reveals the plan requires dozens of current reactors, lifting put in functionality to 200 GW—larger than twice the current functionality of the US—by the highest of the next decade.
“They’re doubling their nuclear vitality inside the subsequent 5 years. We would like a large vitality mission. It may’t be 6-7% progress. We have now to convey avenues to make vitality funding worthwhile as soon as extra,” Garg says.
Convergence of AI and Web3
Primarily based on an IMARC report, India’s cryptocurrency market was valued at $2.6 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $13.9 billion by 2033.
Garg, being considerably bullish on Bitcoin’s potential, says, “People should take time and analysis Bitcoin—I think about it will current the most effective return in your time. It’s a genius idea that solves all the issues which exist inside the fiat world.”
The serial entrepreneur views Bitcoin as a superior retailer of price as compared with standard belongings, like gold, emphasising its deflationary nature and glued present.
“The profound principle is that scarcity creates price. Bitcoin is the purest, soundest money. It protects your hard-earned money. It doesn’t inflate and has no present inflation, which helps you retain the price,” he says.
Wanting within the course of the long term, Garg envisions a convergence between artificial intelligence and blockchain know-how.
“AI and Web3 ought to evolve collectively. Blockchain brings perception and information integrity to the AI world. AI brokers will operate in a Web3 and blockchain ambiance, requiring decentralised protocols,” he gives.
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