 So good afternoon everyone. The budget 2024 is out and we have had some good admissions that have been made by our Honourable Finance Minister Nirmala Sita Raman. She's identified quite a few areas which require a big thrust and we are obviously going to see a bigger light of them in the main budget that we will see in July. But the interim budget indeed was a good one in terms of giving us a scope of things as to where the government's thrust is likely to be, the new government's thrust is likely to be in times to come. So right from improving the income of the middle households in India or the thrust on the sustainability or thrust on climate change, the EV sector which has already seen a big push by the government is going to further be seeing a greater rise. All in all, it's a budget which is very positive. It's a budget that is very inclusive in terms of, you know, how we want a bigger push for the Indian population, Indian sort of the middle income group to be able to do more. And I would also like to check the of course which was again an important aspect that was touched is something that is to be looking forward to. So here entrepreneur today is going to talk about the top budget news that have happened and we going to be joined by various experts who will tell us about their thoughts and the insights that they have got from the budget and what inclination do they see for the budget that will come out in July 2024. So we are back to have with us, Mr. Sandeep Bahamur from Green Frontier Capital and we have also got Mr. Uncle Mansil from Black Soil. Let me start with you Sandeep. Good to have you here with us and thank you for joining us. So given the fact that you know the government has been focusing a lot on sustainability and climate change as a very big aspect so given that today in within budget also our finance minister put a thrust on it what are your views and what do you see as a future investment rolling out of it. So first of all, I think that the Indian Finance Minister played the balancing act really well. This was obviously a vote on account budget because it's an interim budget. So obviously we're going into an election kind of time period. So you know it was expected that there would not be any huge big bang reforms per se in this budget. And so the emphasis largely was on fiscal consolidation and a report card of sorts to basically highlight what the government achieved over the last 10 years, last decade or so. Also what was surprising and pleasantly surprising was the 5.8% fiscal deficit number that the government announced, which obviously indicated a cautious fiscal approach. But what was clear in this budget, which was great for us because we are a climate change fund is the government's continued commitment to addressing climate change as a big thrust area. So whether it was in respect of basically the rooftop solarization that they spoke about one crore homes being potentially a solarized rooftop perspective or setting up of incentives for creation of charging infrastructure to create employment or even basically forcing, not forcing but actually incentivizing the use of electrical vehicle buses for public transportation to transition to the EV kind of EV based economy where all areas that we found were very, very interesting and promising for this area. So climate change obviously continues to remain a big area for the government in terms of focus. So what manifestations do you see for the startup sector, particularly in the space of sustainability in the space of solar? How do you see them making more big bang investments? Do you think as a whole the VC firms are likely to shell out more dollars in these industries in the times to come? So India obviously has been a beacon of growth in an otherwise fairly dull emerging markets scenario. And if you look at S&P, they've actually said that if you're to look at on a compounded annual growth basis over the next three years, which is the economy that's actually going to be driving global emerging market growth. In fact, global growth period, people have talked about India and as the country industrializes, what goes on parallely is that their greenhouse gas emissions are a perfect, you know, at an obvious side effect of that. So you can't solve the world's climate problems without solving India's climate problems. So the benefit of actually India right now is that it offers strongest economic growth and also strongest potential to replace incumbent technologies that are fossil fuel based in both in terms of pricing as well as in terms of performance. And therefore, I believe that the VC community has incredible amounts of dry powder available to chase climate change in India. And obviously, India offers a very wide range of industries in which to play climate change. Whether it's renewable energy, whether it's electrical vehicles, whether it's precision fermentation, whether it's consumer lifestyles, you name it, you know, we have that. And with a 1.4 billion population tailing behind you, you know, it's an incredible opportunity right now. Great. Thank you very much, Sandeep. You know, for sharing that, of course, you feel that particularly with the startup sort of riding the big wave of EVs, which we've already seen in a very large way in India. We would love to see what more is on offer. So thank you for joining us today. And we'll of course, you know, maybe in an hour or so if you're still free, we'd love to have you join us. Absolutely. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I'm going to switch on to you. So the budget of course talks a lot about, you know, how we are seeing an inflation being controlled, how we are seeing greater earning that is happening for the middle class India, you know, there and and of course governments and Mr. Modi's trust itself on, you know, women being more inclusive part of the workforce, Nari Shakti being the campaign slogan that is importantly being led out in this budget and also in the campaign at large. So what are your views in terms of, you know, the workforce we had already with AI on top of us, we are already seeing a lot of sort of change in the future of work and workforce and workplaces that is happening. So particularly what are your views on how how the greater earnings and but and also towards more more women being in the workforce is going to bring a change in the workplace as such in times to come. No, I think India has not been having a great record for women participation over a long period of time and I think the government has really started doing putting in incentives or you know putting in structures in place so that more women obviously become part of the workforce because you cannot have an advanced economy built out with half of population not being part of the overall growth of the economy. So I think there are been focusing on these areas and it is sort of something where it is something that we all have to sort of, you know, as an ecosystem come together and support this overall economy, the larger part of the women obviously in the rural part. And in the rural area they have not spoken about you know they want to increase the number of lucky that can be there, right and provide more credit assistance to them right as we know the entire industry is also supporting the women entrepreneurs in the rural areas and semi urban areas as well. So a lot of these areas sort of been obviously add to the growth on top of it when we are adding a lot of the startup ecosystem areas from an EVs perspective or where they look in agri tech perspective this is all also going to add further enhancing the jobs situation in the rural area which adds further to the overall economy right because if a consumer business is looking to grow in the rural area, it's not possible if the economy the agri economy, the society around it is not doing well right and they are also trying to give more Mudra loans as well to women entrepreneurs to sort of give them the further incentives to you know take it further than talking about affordable housing, providing again housing to them and again where women becomes a very key part of the part of the credit assessment, when, etc, you know, funding some of the potential applicants out there right. So, with all these things happening when they're trying to grow the poultry sector, the dairy sector, the aqua sector all of this directly indirectly women participation is extremely high. And the more healthcare is also provided to them again that also improves has a compounding impact for them to be part of the economy back again. So I think it's overall a very positive. I would say a budget considering that it's an election year could have been more populist, which was the fear of the market, etc. But it didn't go throughout in that direction. A lot of talk about digital technology startups in the overall speech. I think the overall economy everybody understands that jobs is going to be important startups are going to be a key role in that are larger market for startups is beyond the India top 810 15 cities is also the Bharat part. And I think together with the government initiatives on Kpex etc it always puts a further impact is for the startups to again go out and play in the rural area and with the deep tech policy also looking to come in place as announced in the budget where they want to sort of set another separate, you know, regulations for deep tech. So particularly do you think it's a thrust towards a bigger regulation of AI as such. So I think the AI and I think it's still very early days, at least for a large population country like us to start seeing an impact on our overall, you know, the participation and labor participation rate, it may have impact in IT services to begin with more than the other larger labor part of it. But deep tech research I think people have been asking for a policy being there because we have now a large 5 to 10,000 startups were coming into the space over the last period of time. And there is not much VC funding going to the space, right? Because the revenue generation, the technology part of it takes a long time from a gestation period perspective and this kind of financing becomes very interesting way for them to be able to tap, right? So a lot of the IITs, IAMs obviously have multiple ways for them to go and tap some of these capital. A lot of the, we have seen a different space already like our portfolio company idea for which is now become the poster boy for it started off from IIT Bombay and where they reached finally from the IPO markets, but the time horizon that they took, thankfully the drone technology has become now the common thing. But you do not want to miss out on other cycles because for lack of funding. So funding without funding, you cannot expect us to become doing as, you know, our colleagues, Sandeep was mentioning about, about all the other things in climate that has to happen. So a lot of this requires, you know, the innovation, all of it requires all kinds of capital. It requires grants, it requires equity, it requires debt, it requires long term capital, it requires risk capital, it requires a family of risk capital also coming in. So this sort of is very important. The government taking the, you know, the sort of the first steps towards it also energizes the overall space. They have done it on KPEX. On the public side, they did so much KPEX in infrastructure development, no private sector is cutting up. I think the same thing they know you could say are they trying to do on the deep tech side as well. Sure. No, I think that's that's very useful and I'm going to come back to you and could I'm now going to jump on to Prashant Prashant. Thank you for joining us. If you can also join us on the video. Yeah, I see you now. Great. Thank you for joining us here for Entrepreneur India's review of the budget. I see from a tourism standpoint, this budget really looks great. You know, we are already seeing so much infrastructure development happening for airports all over the country and then, you know, Odiji's self sort of belief in seeing that, you know, we have more beach tourism coming to India from Lakshwadeep and also spiritual tourism with Ayodhya's Big Bang launch of Ram Mandir that we saw. So particularly, you know, I mean, given the fact that there is so much infrastructure development and so much trust on tourism. So what what do you think is going to be the outcome of this in the next few months and maybe for this entire year, even before the next budget, the main budget is likely to come before July 2024? No, firstly, thank you for having me over here. You know, since this was an interim budget, honestly, I didn't have much expectation from tourism sector, you know, to be said. And I think government has also done pretty well to not to politicize this interim budget and leave a lot of carrots so that they can, you know, they can hope that people will come back. People will get them back. You know, so, but I was surprised that tourism actually got a very good push even in this interim budget. Out of 15-20 major points which were shared around four or five of them were related to tourism and infrastructure related to tourism. So that's a huge boost for the entire tourism sector, according to me. For the last 10 years, government has been focused on making India as a campaign. Now, I think in the last couple of years, government has started focusing on travel within India as a campaign. Clearly, this budget also showed significant signs towards it where the mentions related to luxury, spiritual tourism, and all of this also took place. So clearly, government has held focused on getting tourism to be activated as a domestic tourism, rather than people spending money out. And I think it's in the right direction. Now, basically, case in point, I talk about Manaras. Manaras, 10 years ago, used to see 25,000 to 30,000 tourists on daily basis. Now that number has jumped to 4 lakh to 5 lakh on daily basis. Now, imagine if only 100,000 rupees per tourist is spent in that particular city. Imagine the kind of impact that city is seeing right now with that tourism coming. And India is ought to be the world leader related to culture and spirituality. So, it's surprising that so far, till now, we did not have a place like Vatican City or Macan or Madina within our country. With the disurgence of Manaras and Ayodhya and a few more other places which are coming in. I believe that we could actually have another Vatican City. Not just for Hindus to travel to these places, but from people from across the globe to actually come and visit these places. India is ought to be the cultural and spiritual leader for the world and it's rightly so that we are actually claiming that place for ourselves at the moment. Again, the other big impetus which I saw in this internet tourism which I was very surprised by was giving interest-free long-term loans to tourist destinations. Now, this was precisely the need of the hour a patient capital was required to places. For example, there's this place called as Yucatan region in Mexico. In 1980s, the Mexican government decided that they are going to create a place which could be the center of excellence for people from the US to come and go over there. Hence, they created a place like Cancun in a matter of 4 to 5 years. Cancun now generates almost 4% of entire GDP from Mexico. So imagine if we actually take this on us on ourselves. India has a tremendous amount of hidden gems like Lakshwadi. Lakshwadi, according to me, had been sleeping child for ever since. So, and especially since these kind of places like Lakshwadi and Amman's are second to none in terms of tourism related to beach vacation. I believe that this is also a responsibility to showcase the power India has in terms of natural beauty and present you to the world for them to also experience India in such manner. Gone are the days when India was known as Nick Charmer or cow dunked places. You know, we are we are a country with from top to bottom we have hundreds and hundreds of places which world must see and first and first for that is for us to see ourselves right. So, you know, giving long term loan interest free loan to such places, I think would mean a lot. I cannot even find out the amount of value it will bring to Indian tourism sector. I mean, yes, aviation wise, the numbers are growing. We are one of the fastest aviation growing country in the world. There's no other country which can say that 100 new imports are going to come in the next decade except for India. So, for all these things India was going in the right direction but I think giving you know interest free loan to tourist destinations and you know making them as a center of excellence was my biggest takeaway in this entire budget. Sure. And do you think we also going to see a bigger threat than sort of ancillary sectors that are related to tourism sectors like hospitality retail, you know restaurants, because you know obviously you know we need people to when we want people to visit either for religious tourism or for holidaying, we would need a bigger sort of play coming from these sides also so do you sort of what kind of I think for me India is a very fairly well-developed you know capitalist market where I have tremendous amount of faith in our entrepreneurship. I will actually share one statistics around it. Harvard business study did this research and you know for all the students who graduate, the worldwide average of students who are graduating to become an entrepreneur is about 53%. But for that number for India is about 83%. So you know Indians by nature are very entrepreneurial nature as the development starts happening all these things related to you know hospitality related to hotels related to restaurants you know will be lapped up by the entrepreneurs of this country related to local transportation even for that matter would be lapped up and I have tremendous amount of faith in our entrepreneurship spirit and hence I do not think that that will become any foundation for the country to grow its tourist spots in India. And what sort of readiness are you working on you know to sort of make the most of this big bang tourism that is going to come to happen in the next. The second largest travel portal in the country fastest growing travel the second largest travel portal in the country I believe that we are very well poised to you know capitalize on this growth. Whether it's related to aviation whether it's related to hospitality whether it's related to sightseeing we are extremely well poised to capitalize on it but more than any business at this moment I'm just happy for the country. And you know as entrepreneurs I think as a company I think we have done fairly well more than anything of that I'm just really excited about the future of the country and I'm looking forward to create you know at least 1015 you dance for the country in the next decade. Thank you very much for joining us. That is a that is a great sort of point of view that you've brought to the table and I think we're going to continue these discussions as to what more and what more areas are likely to benefit from the announcements made today. But great thanks for sharing your insights today. At this point I'm also going to ask my colleague Puneeta Kapoor to join us for this discussion. And we would sort of take this discussion forward with our other panelists we have got. I see Mr Rahul Agarwala who's joined us from. Yeah, so Puneeta if you want to proceed the discussion. And thanks Rahul and Raju for joining us Rahul we've seen some interesting announcements around the research and innovation part and particularly it's a happy time for deep tech startups so want to hear your side. Absolutely I think the government has been quite supportive of both startups and the entire deep tech sector. The budget continues that I think they've announced a one lakh crore fund to give loans for R&D and deep tech I think that's a great initiative. We need more capital I think deep tech is a capital hungry sector and the government's efforts towards providing that capital and that to patient capital will go a long way in helping us startups really scale up and innovation which is required. The innovation is different for every needs are different right our country's needs given our population given our democracy, you know, all the demographics we have going to be different. We'll have much larger trust on education on agriculture and health, then maybe some of the other things and we have the people and the technology to really solve those problems actually not only for ourselves but for the globe. So, government support here is really, really great. Even extension of the tax benefits for startups investments for pension funds etc is also to my mind a great. So I'm very happy with the budget. Pleasant be surprised. Everybody was saying this may be just a continuation of what has been coming but some of the steps announced by the finance finance minister were really really positive. Raju, I would like to bring you here and what more do you think, of course, there were a lot of expectations from startups with regards to taxation, but the current pension funds and other taxation aspects which would be of help. Can you analyze that for our viewers. Sure. Thank you very much for having me on this esteem panel as people must be aware not nothing much was expected as such on the tax front but the extension of tax holiday for eligible startups and also mentioned and units in IFC or the sovereign wealth fund that gave the confidence to these investors that the government means business and they will continue to support the investments made by these sectors which will result into promoting the economic growth that and economic growth and momentum that we are seeing over the years. Okay, sure. But do you think when we'll have the full budget in July, there would be much more announcement with regards to direct indirect taxes for the general audience. For sure, because see one of the I would not say a miss but there was a lot of expectation on increasing the sunset for new manufacturing companies, which is, which has a sunset clause for 31st March. So there was expectation that it will also get extended which has not happened hopefully that will happen in in in the main budget. There were talks about rationalization of capital gains taxes and tedious provisions. You know, given that there are multiple computation for capital gains also for tedious multiple sections, although it has benefited government in increasing the tax base, but the time has come to rationalize some of it to just reduce the compliance burden. So all these, we expect that will get covered in the in the main budget, along with some announcements around international tax like best 2.0, which has gained momentum in in EU and other developed economies. But we also need to do our bit to support the Indian multinationals which are operating across the globe. Okay, so, and overall I mean from the infrastructure point of view, do you think this would be a happy time for them? Yeah, of course, it's not just happy times for this year but if you look at past years as well, the the spend on infrastructure has, you know, if I just take the numbers it was 5.5 lakh crore in 2021-22. And this year we are talking about 11.11 lakh crore, which is just double in in three years, which is tremendous and which and it has a ripple effect. The investment infrastructure has a ripple effect, not just for getting the infrastructure ready, which is supporting associated industries like steel or cement, the employment, also tourism. Better infrastructure in terms of road, airports, ports and other things also. So it has a lot of ripple effect on the economy and that that's a great thing that the government has continued the thrust on investment in infrastructure. Sure. And Rahul, I'll just come again to you. So as company again, but we talk about investing in deep tech and innovation. Do you want to take us through the kind of investment you as a company would be doing in the space? So we focus on early stage artificial intelligence companies. We think it's the, you know, the age of AI. 2023 saw a lot of excitement around it but we've been investing for the last few years in the sector. And we support companies which are actually doing innovation, which are building intellectual property. We call the strategy thick IP. So not just companies which are using artificial intelligence because everybody will use AI, but companies that are building AI. So those are the kind of, and where are these being done, which is why I was so excited by the government's announcement today. We look at across sectors because AI affects literally every sector, every business that you can think of, every consumer. I mean, you already are using AI in your phone. That opportunity comes once in a lifetime where every industry is impacted by the same kind of technology. And we are looking at today the cost of AI are high. Some of the things which are challenging is that the cost is high. But this cost curve is a declining cost curve. And much like cost of chips, then so many things just keeps going down. It completely changes the ball game. And that is what our investment philosophy is. Okay. Sure. So thank you for sharing your perspective. Thank you, Rahul. Thank you, Raju for joining us today here and. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Okay. We'll conclude it here. Thank you so much. Bye.