The head of a top Silicon Valley-based incubator describes India as an “incredible engineering powerhouse” and said some of the world’s best companies like Google and Microsoft will be born in the country if it can tap into that potential.
Saeed Amidi, CEO and founder of Plug and Play – a global innovation platform that aims to connect early stage investors, startups and the world’s largest corporations – also hailed Indians as highly talented and smart people. He said that the founders of 50 percent of startups are from India.
I can tell you that more than 50 percent of these startups that are either physically in this building, in Plug and Play, or that we invest in come from statistics (statistics), he said. Answering a question, Saeed said that according to the research he has done, India is an incredible engineering powerhouse.
If I’m not mistaken, there are almost four million new graduates in software engineering every year. And I think that is the strength you have in India. If we embrace this power, some of the best companies in the world like Google and Microsoft will be born in India, Saeed said in response to a question.
Earlier this week, Plug and Play hosted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for an interactive session on artificial intelligence and other related technologies. Indians, he said, are very talented and very smart. In general, we’ve learned that with, say, millions of dollars in investment, immigrant entrepreneurs take society and technology much further. Quite frankly, they work harder, they work smarter. We are very happy to find some immigrants in the founding team, especially from India, he said.
Observing China’s success, he said one thing India could improve on is infrastructure. It should be simplified a bit, the laws can be simplified, especially for foreign investment and large corporations. But in India, the market is so big that it cannot be ignored, he said. So we really feel that India is going to grow tremendously in the next 20 years and we hope to be a part of that growth,” he said.
