Silicon Valley super excited about India: TiE president Anita Manwani

“I am super excited and I think Silicon Valley is super excited because we have at the helm of India’s leadership a clear commitment to one entrepreneurship to open business with initiatives like the GIFT city, with initiatives that are making investments and repatriation of funds back to the United States, I would say a little easier than what it was before,” Manwani told PTI in an interview.

“So, these are all initiatives that are truly going to enhance the increasing activity in the corridor with India. This is India’s decade, and it’s India’s decade to lose because India is poised for winning innings here. We are all rooting for the leadership,” Manwani said in response to a question.

A seasoned corporate executive and entrepreneur, Manwani is one of 80 women recognised in the US for their technology leadership, and top 100 Women of influence in Silicon Valley.

She is also the founder and CEO of Carobar Business Solutions, reLIMS.

Manwani said she was very impressed listening to the leaders speak at the India Conclave in New Delhi recently.

“It is really heartwarming to also see that the leaders are not just concerned about education and funding and entrepreneurship and technology, but they’re also making their mark globally, both in terms of helping wherever help is needed,” she said.

During international crises, whether it is floods or other kinds of activities, India is stepping up and truly behaving like a world leader, she said.

“As a US citizen of Indian-origin, it brings a smile. I know that many of the Indian diaspora share that,” Manwani said.

“We think that TiE and TiE Silicon Valley can play a very big role and are continuing to do that. We see that role only enhancing in this corridor with India,” Manwani said.

She said that the upcoming TiEcon, the world’s largest tech conference for entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and investors, will focus on the challenges posed by artificial intelligence and its opportunities in tech sectors.

The flagship event of TiE Silicon Valley, being billed as the groundbreaking event showcasing AI’s profound and pervasive influence in the world, will also focus this year on “exponential” India, in recognition of the big role that the country is playing in AI’s talent pool.

The event will bring the top leaders from the industry to the Santa Clara Convention Centre in Silicon Valley, California, from May 1 to 3.

“We are very excited about TiEcon. This is going to be one of the best lineups of industry leaders,” she said.

“Our theme this year is AI Ubiquity, which means looking at AI challenges and opportunities in each of the tech sectors, including healthcare from a provider perspective, healthcare from a life sciences perspective,” Manwani told PTI.

“We’re also going to be having tracks on manufacturing and supply chain, as well as ESG (environmental, social, and governance), which is focused on the race to net zero,” she said.

“We will have, this year, a special track on exponential India. India plays a very big role in the AI talent pool that they have, (Prime Minister) Modiji’s many, many programmes on increasing the number of AI startups,” Manwani said ahead of the three-day event in Silicon Valley beginning May 1.

“We will also have conversations on how we have the renaissance of semiconductors with the need for more compute power and GPUs, how this is impacting the growth in semiconductors, the research in semiconductors,” she said.

There will be conversations around security, which has become so important with the cloud and the whole ability to have more AI-generated data, she said.

Ethics and how AI is impacting education is going to be a conversation led by thought leaders, both from the academic world as well as from the world of robotics, she said.

The conference will be set off by the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, who will be followed by others like Warner Thomas, the CEO of Sutter Health, one of the largest healthcare providers in the US.

Nikesh Arora from Palo Alto Networks, a transformational leader who has made many moves in the world of cyber security and Jay Choudhury from Zscaler are among the other prominent speakers, according to Manwani.

“We have senior executives from Micron who will also be sharing their vision and how they are going to be implementing and accelerating the growth of AI,” she said.

Describing it as one of the best and the largest conferences for TiEcon so far, Manwani said she expects a lot of young aspiring entrepreneurs, technologists, and students to attend it.

Over the years, TiE has grown to 57 chapters and 14 countries. TiE Silicon Valley is the founding chapter.

“My vision would be that the I in TiE, which stands for Indus, becomes I as in international. So that’s where the change is in TiE,” Manwani said, adding that TiE has several initiatives in this regard including having tie-ups with similar counterpart organizations in the Asian community.