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R 081328Z MAY 09
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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NEW DELHI 000941 
 
STATE FOR OES/PCI, OES/STC, OES/SAT, OES/EGC, AND SCA/INS 
STATE FOR STAS 
STATE PASS TO NSF FOR INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS 
HHS PASS TO NIH 
STATE PASS TO USAID 
STATE FOR SCA, OES (STAS FEDOROFF); OES/PDAS/RHARNISH; OES/PCI 
STEWART; OES/IHB MURPHY; OES/GTHOMPSON 
STATE FOR EEB/DAVID HENRY 
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PASS TO NSF/MLUECK 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: TSPL TBIO TNGD TPHY EINV SIPR TINT SCUL ECPS IN
SUBJECT: EMERGING TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON ADAPTATION, NOT 
INNOVATION 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY: EmTech India '09 was MIT Technology Review's first ever 
emerging technology conference held outside the U.S.  The conference 
was billed as a forum to discuss technological trends and showcase 
India's latest cutting edge technologies in information and 
communications technology, clean and green technologies, 
nanotechnology, biotechnology and homeland security.  Instead, the 
conference focused on technology adaptation and investment 
opportunities to serve the most impoverished 800 million Indians - 
collectively known as the bottom of the pyramid (BOP.)  The 
conference also launched the Indian edition of MIT's Technology 
Review in collaboration with Indian technology publisher CyberMedia. 
 Mr. Jason Pontin, Editor-in chief of MIT's Technology Review, said 
India was chosen for the new magazine and conference because MIT saw 
a growing trend of Indian origin innovators identifying ideas in the 
U.S. then setting up enterprises in India, and also because of 
India's development of inexpensive and innovative technologies 
focused on the emerging lower-end of the market. END SUMMARY 
 
MICRO ENTREPRENEURS AND VENTURE CAPITALISTS 
 
¶2.  Prof. Anil K. Gupta from the Indian Institute of Management, 
Ahmedabad and also Executive Vice Chairperson of the National 
Innovation Foundation (NIF), said that the NIF helps catalogue, 
facilitate value addition, and market technologies developed by 
rural entrepreneurs.  In the last 2 years, rural innovators had 
registered over 100,000 inexpensive innovations which address 
specific needs of the rural community but require funding and 
technical support to develop into useful products.  Some of the 
examples he gave were: 
 
-- A water tap that generates electricity through flowing water. 
-- A foldable lightweight ladder-type device. 
-- A bicycle which is both an exercise bike and washing machine. 
 
¶3.  Other BOP-market technologies discussed by multinationals during 
the conference included: 
 
-- An add-on device for mobile phone-processing of secure 
transactions.  Mr. Sanjay Swamy, CEO, mChek, said that this had 
enabled over 2 million rural people and small businesses to pay 
their bills via mobile phone and thus save time and money. 
 
-- A Global Positioning System based, tamper-proof Auto Rickshaw 
(three wheeler)/Taxi fare meter developed by students at 
Indraprastha University, Delhi and partly funded by HP. 
 
-- A technology to create a national identity number for all Indians 
linked to their mobile phone, being developed by Alcatel Lucent in 
collaboration with the Government of India (GOI). 
 
-- An enterprise management system developed by Microsoft in 
collaboration with the GOI, and used by an industrial cluster of 
5000 textile units to manage their operations and supply chains. 
 
-- A voice web technology being developed for the rural community 
which does not require computer literacy and can be implemented in 
any language. Developed by IBM India, this technology has been 
tested in villages in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The opportunity 
to use voice rather than written characters is particularly 
appealing in a country where so many languages are spoken and a 
large percentage of the population is illiterate. 
 
 
NEW DELHI 00000941  002 OF 004 
 
 
-- A light and strong fiber-based material for making fishing nets 
for rural fisherman developed by Honeywell. 
 
¶4.  In 2008, venture capitalists from the US, India and other 
international groups invested USD 864 million in 80 deals in India 
in business and financial services, IT related technologies, energy 
& utilities, and biotechnology.  Sateesh Andra, venture partner of 
Draper Fisher Jurvetson India, said that besides IT and healthcare, 
rural and education sectors were the emerging areas of interest to 
venture capitalists, and that the biggest challenge was in reaching 
out to the BOP market.  Aruna Sundararajan, CEO of Infrastructure 
Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) said that to reach out to the 
BOP market it was very important to have a proper marriage between 
technology and business innovation.  Both emphasized looking at a 
five to seven year cycle when investing in this market. 
 
ICT FERTILE GROUND FOR INDIAN INNOVATION 
 
¶5.  Information and communication technology (ICT) dominated the 
conference, with nearly every session referencing ICT in some way. 
Many of the discussions revolved around ICT-enabled software and 
hardware run from mobile technology which is being used in 
education, health care, e-governance, banking, traffic management 
and homeland security.  Indian companies including Infosys, Tata 
Consultancy Services, Tuple Technologies, Iridium Interactive and 
Wipro, as well as US companies IBM, Intel, HP, Yahoo, Texas 
Instrument, Freescale Semiconductor, and Microsoft, all identified 
their interest in developing this technology and indicated only the 
tip of the iceberg was discussed during the conference. 
 
¶6.  Most speakers felt that India was ahead of the curve in 
maximizing the advantages of mobile technologies - partly from a 
lack of adequate bandwidth and connectivity infrastructure for 
conventional technology, and partly from the accelerated spread of 
inexpensive mobile phones in India.  A United Nations Development 
Program 2005 report notes that India has higher mobile phone 
literacy (82 percent) than it does Internet literacy (55 percent). 
 
 
HEALTH CARE AND EDUCATION 
 
¶7.  Health care and both formal and informal education were 
identified as growth areas in India, since a majority of the people 
still have no access and/or cannot afford them.  Dr. Reddy, the 
founder and chairman of Apollo hospitals, talked about using 
telemedicine to connect specialty hospitals with other specialists, 
individual doctors in suburban areas, and rural health centers in 
order to deliver affordable and quality health care.  He said Apollo 
was actively engaged with more than 2000 villages.  Wipro, Tuple 
Technologies, Hindustan Computers limited, and Infosys, as well as 
small and medium entrepreneurs associated with academic institutions 
and US companies like Intel, Texas Instruments, HP and Agilent are 
also working to address this market.  In the Eleventh Five year Plan 
(2007-2012), the GOI initiated a mission to develop inexpensive 
medical instruments and tools to facilitate telemedicine-based 
services and the Indian Space Research Organization has ongoing 
programs with Indian educational institutions to develop 
telemedicine and teleeducation capabilities. 
 
¶8.  To reach the large number of undereducated children, several 
organizations focused on innovative education delivery technologies, 
including: 
 
NEW DELHI 00000941  003 OF 004 
 
 
 
-- The "One Laptop Per Child" project, a part of the GOI's "Sakshat" 
education program. 
 
-- Mobile phone based education delivery in villages by Value Based 
Skill Academy, run in Western Uttar Pradesh by entrepreneur Bijender 
Khokhar. 
 
-- IT buses in rural India that provide mobile computing classrooms 
to spread IT literacy among rural school students. 
 
-- The Indira Soochna Shakti - "Empowering a quarter million 
schoolgirls through ICT" project in Chhattisgarh, India 
 
CLEAN ENERGY AND GREEN TRANSPORTATION 
 
¶9.  Lack of appropriate panelists hampered any meaningful discussion 
on clean energy and green transportation, though it was allocated 
multiple sessions in the conference.  A recurrent theme was the need 
for clearer guidance from government; the panelists felt that 
development of infrastructure was required before any new 
technologies - such as biofuels, electric vehicles or solar energy - 
would be effective.  Panelists noted that REVA was India's only 
electric car manufacturer, and the hybrid car market in India was 
virtually nonexistent. 
 
NANOTECHNOLOGY AND BIOTECHNOLOGY 
 
¶10.  The GOI is investing heavily in funding and capacity building 
for both nanotechnology (REFTEL A) and biotechnology, and panelists 
believed that the recent increases in GOI funding were starting to 
show.  Agilent technologies mentioned that in 2008 they sold more 
than 25 Atomic Force Microscopes to Indian academic and R&D 
institutions - a huge jump from previous years.  Prof. Vijay 
Chandru, Chairman and CEO, Strand Life Sciences, said that India was 
poised to be a leader in not just data generation but also 
interpretation, and highlighted the example of Strand's developments 
in virtual organ models and a gene sequencing platform called 
"Genespring."  He claimed it was the world's largest and cost only 
USD 5,000, compared to a similar system that cost USD 3 billion in 
¶2003. (NOTE: The purchase of additional equipment does suggest 
expansion of programs.  However, the actual qualitative impact of 
the increased funding is less clear and does not appear to be 
uniform across government and academic institutions, due in part to 
a shortage of qualified scientists and professors. END NOTE) 
 
¶11.  Dr. M. K. Bhan, Secretary of the GOI's Department of 
Biotechnology, listed India's biotechnology priorities as genetics, 
vaccines, diagnosis and imaging, low cost health technology, 
agriculture and energy.  Challenges India is facing right now 
include an unfavorable investment climate, a shortage of 500-600 
scientific leaders in both industry and government, and need for a 
long-term outlook and sustained funding for both private and 
government labs.  Highlighting the drug industry, Dr Bhan indicated 
that India's regulatory system was weak and that when industry 
regulation improved and drug companies started doing their job on 
the regulatory front, costs for medications would probably increase 
10 fold. 
 
HOMELAND SECURITY DISCUSSION A NONSTARTER 
 
¶12.  In the light of the Mumbai attacks, we expected good 
 
NEW DELHI 00000941  004 OF 004 
 
 
discussions in the homeland security technology session.  However, 
the panel did not include any GOI personnel currently associated 
with homeland security, and the conversations were light on 
substance.  Mr. Nath, former Special Director of Intelligence Bureau 
and currently CEO of the Indian Institute of Security & Safety 
Management, said that the GOI lacked a policy for homeland security 
and more importantly both the GOI and the private sector had yet to 
accept the need for and invest in security.  Tuple Technologies, 
Honeywell, and HP mentioned that they were working with the GOI to 
develop smart sensors, data mining systems, image processing and 
other ICT-enabled services to address the homeland security related 
issues, but did not provide details. 
 
¶13.  COMMENT:  Very little truly emergent technology was discussed 
at the conference, which focused more on adapting existing 
technologies into low-cost and accessible products for the 
impoverished 800 million people that have not benefited from India's 
recent accelerated growth.  Only half of the initial list of 
companies and invitees attended the conference and several sessions 
lacked quality panelists.  Attendance by venture capitalists and the 
relatively stronger business presence suggest commercial interest in 
emerging opportunities in India's technology market.  END COMMENT. 
 
 
BURLEIGH