Blockchain is a technology I believe in & it’s different from crypto: Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani, CMD, Reliance Industries Ltd, shared his views on a range of topics, including the digital transition happening in India, the Digital First Revolution, Data - the new oil, blockchain versus crypto, at the InFinity Forum. The InFinity Forum was organised by the Government of India, International Financial Services Centre Authority, GIFT City and Bloomberg.

Speaking at the event, Mukesh Ambani highlighted four technology transitions that he has seen in his lifetime.

The first was the transition from the mainframe computer to where computers were used only by a few people to where computers were being used by thousands of people. And this happened when he was a chemical engineering student, in college, in the 70s.

The second was the transition from this basic Computer Revolution – where there were client servers, mainframes that industry started using – to the ICT Revolution. This is when mobile phones and the Internet came into being as two separate developments.

The third was a transition from mobile and computer, both converging into the Digital Revolution, when Internet came into force. This is when mobile and the Internet got merged. As a result, the number of users grew exponentially, and everything became data-driven.

“Now we are witnessing the fourth transition – from the Digital Revolution, where billions of people across the world use digital technology, to the Digital First Revolution – where digital becomes the first way of life for all 7 billion people today,” Ambani said. According to him, this will bring transformation that will connect all physical things.

He affirmed, “I believe like China led manufacturing, India will lead the digital society and become a global leader in its own right.” While stating that India is on the verge of building a Digital Society, he explained, “Everything in the physical world, almost every activity in the human world, can now be digitised, digitally enabled, digitally enriched, and digitally transformed. Anything and everything that can go digital is going digital at an exponential pace.”

Sharing his concept of the ‘Digital First’ Revolution, Ambani said that the physical world will become subordinate to the digital world. “Whatever product or service we desire is being first imagined and designed in the digital space, and then created in the physical space,” he added.

He saw this coming Digital First Revolution making India and the world more “inclusively prosperous”, with drastic cost reduction and drastic reduction in waste resource opportunity in the coming years. Ambani also saw tremendous value creation in the virtual world, just as there is value creation in the physical world.

Data is indeed the New Oil

Comparing data, the New Oil, with traditional oil, Ambani said that the latter was extracted at select places – thus, it created wealth only for a few countries. In contrast, the New Oil – that is Data – can be generated and consumed everywhere and by everybody.

He further said, “Data has the potential to create value equitably, across sectors, across geographies and across economic classes. Every person can be a user, creator and owner of data. Therefore, the New Oil has been completely democratised and decentralised.”

According to Ambani, here, India has a unique advantage – Demography. He pointed out, “We are a nation of 1.35 billion people, and will soon become the world’s most populous nation, overtaking China, and will also be the world’s youngest nation. Our second major strength is that India has built the Digital Pipeline – a world-class digital infrastructure – that has reached all our cities, towns, and almost all our 600,000 villages.”

He added that Jio has taken the lead in this, ensuring affordable high-speed data connectivity, which is a prerequisite for the digital revolution. Even as India is fully transitioning from the 2G era to the 4G era, the next step will be connectivity of machines, devices and vehicles, which is the Internet of Things or IoT. “This will involve many components like different kinds of sensors, smart devices, edge computing, cloud computing and AI. With 5G rollout next year in India, we are well on our way to have one of the most advanced infrastructures in the world,” he noted.

Calling digital technology “the greatest gift to humanity”, Ambani further said that it is “a great leveller and a great democratiser”.

Both data and digital infrastructure are strategically important not only for India, but for all countries he said and added that every country has the right to build and protect its own strategic digital infrastructure. “Therefore, I believe we need uniform global standards, so that cross-border transactions, collaborations and partnerships are not hampered,” he further said.

“India can lead the way to a uniform UPI or a uniform payment interface. India’s Aadhaar can lead the way to a uniform Aadhaar for all the seven billion people, so that every person on this earth is uniquely identified and India leads the way, and that’s the opportunity,” Ambani said. At the same time, he emphasised that every citizen’s right to privacy has to be safeguarded, and called for having “the right policies and the right regulatory framework to balance the imperatives of creating next generation infrastructure, harmonising and integrating it with the rest of the world and regulating in a way that we don’t stifle innovation but protect the end user and all the citizens of the country and the world”.

Blockchain & Crypto

Speaking at the event, Ambani said, “Blockchain is a technology I believe in and it’s different from crypto. I think smart token is making sure that you are creating transactions that can never be changed. It is a very important framework for just and trust-based transaction and trust-based society, which is a prerequisite for all of us. I think that the convergence of real time, the convergence of the distributed ledger and blockchain technologies, smart tokens, the convergence of physical and digital through IoT will enable and redefine the decentralised financial sector in a way we have never imagined.”

He saw this happening in the coming 10 years, which will be a prerequisite to a great economic growth. “Today there is more money chasing people and we are short of ideas, and I am sure all our young people will come with up with more and more ideas as there are still many problems to be solved in the world,” he added.