Hi. This is Paul Zehiser, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneur. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app. It helps more people learn how to have a positive impact through a value space business. Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Ujjwal Deep Dahal. And our topic is leapfrogging to a thriving sustainable economy in Bhutan. Bhutan is the CEO of drug holding and investments, the largest and only government owned holding company in Bhutan. It was established in 2007 to hold and manage the existing and future investments of the Royal Government for the long term benefit of the people of Bhutan. Ucho, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Paul. It's my pleasure to be here and greetings to all listeners.

I don't think we've ever done a show like this. This is a really unique situation I'm thrilled for our listeners to hear what you all are up to, but Before we get into what you're doing, what would somebody who's never heard of you need to know a little bit about your back story to understand who you are, and then we'll get into the actual work.

Sure, Paul. Good evening, everyone again. My name is Ujjwal. I am passionate about solving problems. I always see problems as opportunities. And that's that's what drives me. My background, of course, I I I am an electrical engineer I've worked in the past systems, and I now work in the holding company looking after about 2022 different companies. But the passion is with problem solving, and I and and very passionate about using technology to solve problems looking at society, what's the problem that society faces, that humanity faces, and how can we solve those using tech. using any other tools that's available. That's that's how I look like, and and and that's how I want to, you know, gather people like minded people together to see problems as opportunities.

Beautiful. And in 2007, the royal government of Bhutan said, hey. We have some challenges that we'd like to address in a very unique way, and that led to this holding company. Give us a sense of, like, what was the conversation in 2007? What were some of the challenges and why this very unique structure help move the economy of a whole nation.

Right. So 2007, if you look at it, we are also transitioning from anarchy to you know, Parliamentary democracy. So that was one huge change happening in 2007, and it was important to look at how do we manage the national wealth in a way professionally managed, intelligently managed. in a way that serves not only the present generation Bhutan future Putines, the future generation of Bhutan, So the obvious structure that evolved was the formation of Recruiting Investments DHI. which is formed under the Royal Charter, and is also incorporated under the Big Companies Act of the Kingdom Football Time. Today, it has evolved to be holding 22 different companies in different shareholding patterns, but The most interesting thing about this whole structure is that we operate in the space of being efficient in a corporate setting But at the same time, all our subsidiary companies completely pay taxes as an independent registered company And so does the withholding and investments pay taxes to the government and also pays dividends to the government. So largely, everything that recording an investment and its subsidiaries earn, go back to the government for functioning of the government. And we also manage the remaining revenue that we have remaining in terms of investing in long term sustainable business for the country. So that's that's the part about holding the companies and investments for for the country.

In in our title, the first word, Ujjal, is is leapfrogging. Right? So so when you look back at the economy at Bhutan, in 2007 when DHI was being founded. Like, what was this idea of leapfrogging and trying to build a sustainable economy in Vuitton, what what what did that look like? What did that mean to you all?

So let's let's rewind in 20 2007, as you mentioned. I think in 2007, when you're calling in investments created. I think it was more of consolidation. It was more of managing after consolidation so that we become more efficient in managing it. We become more professional. But since 2007, as we have seen how the economy around the world Bhutan economy has evolved, so has so has to work company also. So I I see, you know, a lot of change in the way we need to operate, but also a quick adaptation in terms of the direction we take as a company over the years. This has been more so important considering the recent, of course, the COVID and the and the turn turn of the economy after post COVID. So it has it was very important for trickling investments to retrospect since its formulation, since its consolidation, to where it stood in

2020,

21 as it went through the COVID phase, as we all went through the COVID phase around the world. And that's where, I think, in last 2 years, we have shifted our gears in a way. to repurpose ourselves as much as we have consolidated, we work on efficiency innovation in that consolidated space of portfolio of investments we have. But moving forward, which is a very interesting situation for a country like Bhutan how do we position ourselves to leverage, take advantage of the technological revolution that's happening around the world to make industries and businesses at DHI, which are which solve problems of society, but which are sustainable leveraging technology. So that has been our focus. And moving forward, leveraging technology We are creating a national endeavor not only to invest in bigger companies, but also invest in building a platform for the next generation of youth to contribute in problem solving and hence building companies that matter, companies with values, you know, building technologies with values. So in a nutshell, that's how I see the progression of DHI from 2007 and the present juncture. you know and and moving forward, of course, we can have a conversation of how we are planning and what has happened in the last 2 years or 3 years with COVID hitting and the realization that we need to be agile and adaptive in terms of managing our objectives and managing our mission.

When I was doing my research, I was looking at the 2021 annual report and some language there that really struck me you all were talking in that report about, quote, the rapid digitalization and diversification of your economy. And that that really spoke to me. Like, if I'm a listener, if I heard that, I'd be like, oh, I get it. Right? to really leaning into the innovation economy and actually one of your initiatives is named Inotac. Right? So talk to us a little bit about, you know, COVID hit, and you all said, we're gonna really lean into like, I heard some things from you when we were talking before we hit record, that some of your goals are to find companies that can grow 10 x in 7 years, which is pretty traditional of, you know, like, fast growing, innovative companies or might look for, like, you're bringing that kind of intentionality of growth and leaning into tech And, yeah, the why of it is quite different. But talk to us a little bit first about that mindset and that shift to really looking towards fast growing companies, and then we'll sync that up with your values. But talk to us a little bit about what what does that look like in Bhutan? And what kind of companies are we talking about?

Right. So let's let's take a step back in terms of understanding Bhutan a little bit. Bhutan is a small country, about 37,000 square kilometers. And our if you looked at a macro challenges of Bhutan is is our geography. It's our demography. It's our topography. It's our connectivity. these are major macro challenges we have. And I as I always mention as I mentioned in the beginning, I will kind of if I wanna look at these challenges as opportunities, But these are real challenges because of being a very highly mountainous country our 37000 Square Kilometer, we have planes which are at three hundred meters, and we have, you know, habitation at 5 thousand meters. So that's that's how the country is. Now in that situation, having a very heavy manufacturing industries has its own challenges. If you look at in the eighties nineties, especially in the nineties with the dotcom revolution, with the telecom revolution, I think we kind of missed the bus during those times. But here in 2015, 2020, I think the opportunity with, you know, industry 4dot or, you know, opportunities with AI, opportunities with blockchain. We kind of manage those macro challenges about demography, geography, connectivity, top of hopefully. We kinda manage those with the digital with with the evolution of computing power and the opportunity in the digital space. So I think that was kind of a realization as a nation we had. And at the holding level, we created the a department actually called the innovation and technology department. We call we and then we call ourselves, you know, tech that was just about 3 years ago. And our philosophy in Inotec was let's build proof of concept projects Basically, we are doing applied research. Eventually, we want to evolve more into more fundamental research. But at this point in time, we started with applied research. So we are doing at this point about 20 to 25 different projects. that spans from drones. Jones, right, from design to manufacturing to use cases. Use case is the low hanging fruit. And drones are special cases in Bhutan, considering the terrain, whether we use drones for power line monitoring and building AI algorithms to you know, automatically find falls. So these are the kind of works we are doing in in in a tech. Similarly, another very interesting project I would want to want to share with our listeners is on the national digital identity. That's all that project also started as a proof of concept project in Inotec. we are the 1st country in the world now after 2 years of development to have successfully launched decentralized digital identity. And interestingly, Paul, we just the parliament just passed last week. The National Digital Identity Act. It's yet to be formalized, but should be done in next week. And we, again, will be the we are the 1st sovereign government in the world to actually pass a decentralized digital identity act. The and and this was completely built in Bhutan by opportunities, of course, bringing in, you know, expertise from outside Bhutan built in the country. So AI drones National Digital Identity backed by Blockchain. These are some of the manifestations of lean investment. to build a product which proves the solution and then scaling it up. Similarly, we are working on many other fields of tech to build technology with values in partnership with startups from Singapore, India, Israel, even some companies in Silicon Valley, we are working closely to build products in return. And that's that's how we set ourselves to build ourselves towards being a start up economy. Hopefully, this journey will take us to a 10 x growth as DHI moving forward. But, again, more importantly, we want to look at tech to solve problems that matter to societies But in in doing so, we want to build products in Bhutan, test it in Bhutan, and eventually take these products out of the country. which helps us economically to grow our to to grow our economy. But at the same time, I firmly believe that the solutions that we create and test in the time to take internationally is also to this also to solve problems that societies around the world face for that matter, humanity face, It may be as simple as managing water water or managing transportation more intelligently with the use of tech and our experience in return.

Beautiful. So to draw my understanding is It's a very mountainous country, and that makes you know, if you were to be building I don't know tables. Right? Or some other, like, you know, big physical product. It's expensive to move it's hard to ship to other countries. That was what you were talking about in terms of, you know, cars or refrigerators. Right? Those kind of things are big. They're bulky. They're most oftentimes successfully transported by trains or even more so by ships, and that's not necessarily playing to Bhutan strengths. So you all said, well, what about the innovation economy? And that this was a great example. I actually had seen that that using drones to monitor power lines. So let's let's unpack that one a little bit, so our listeners can understand. I know I live in New Mexico, in the rural southwest. And a lot of our electricity grid infrastructure was built during the CCC, the civilian conservation corpse, which were response to the great depression in the US. We're talking, like, the 19 thirties. Right? Oh. 90, a 100 years ago. Some of our infrastructure very old. And yet because it's a lot of the west is rural between the cities, there's a lot to monitor and a lot of that infrastructure is quite old. And so, you know, something like that technology can use drones as opposed to a human in a truck needing to find where maintenance is needed and maybe even being able to do some simple a human to go out. Is that kind of the thinking behind the drone power line monitoring product that you're talking about?

Yes, Paul. And this is an interesting area, and I hope our listeners can, you know, correlate this. But specifically about drones, the way we are looking at drones is if you look at the electrical industry around the world, it's a very traditional industry. We don't want to take too much risks because it has a lot of implications. We are happy as long as the power is on, but there's so much of mechanics from the generating stations till you light the bulb in your house, which can be 1000 of kilometers away from the generating plant. In Bhutan, we are 100% hydro And our transmission lines could start from 300 meter altitude and go all the way to 5

4500

meter altitude. Bhutan is 100 percent electrified by grid, 99.97 percent electrified by grid. We are the only surplus energy country in South Asia, and we do have issues about powered during winter because we are hydro and our rivers dry up during hydro during winter. Now on that context, next, when your transmission lines run around the hills covered with forest, when, you know, when there are outages, it's of course, the sensing element at the far ends do give us the indication where the fault is, but it's not always 100% accurate. And there are conditions in the system when these are not accurate at all. And that's the point in time when you have to actually start walking from hill to hill to actually physically locate the fault. And that is exactly the point in time when a drone with cameras could fly over the transmission lines, find the fault in 15 minutes, then we dispatch our crew to actually you know, maintain the line. Now when I when I talk about this 14 100 kv line or 220 kv line outage for 1 hour cost 1,000,000 millions of neutrons, 100 of 1000 of dollars. But apart from that, more importantly, is outage of electricity in the country. and also export to India. So the drone brings in a lot of value. Now what we have done with the drone is that we're looking at 3 verticals of industries. 1 is let's use drones in this case of transmission lines to find this fault. So my drone flies and the camera takes the picture, but we build an AI algorithm to actually automatically as the drone flies to find the fault. This could be for a particular fault or it could be for preventive maintenance. So we get a lot of data, and intelligently, we operate the transmission lines to restore the fault or find situations where we we can react ahead of time to ensure that there are no outages in the future. That's one vertical we are working on. Similarly, use cases and medicines and all that is we are trying and testing with drones from our from, you know, Singapore and Japan collaboration with companies in Singapore and Japan. The second and third vertical that we are working on is in close collaboration with our university, our engineering university in Qatar to actually design the drones And, also, because we have set up this super fab lab in in collaboration with MIT during the COVID time, which is very interesting experience altogether, We have the capacity to prototype drone parts and build build drones. So in collaboration with MIT, as we set up the super fab lab, in collaboration with our own university engineering students and lecturers, The second and third vertical of drone industry that we are working on is designing drones that work in 4000 meter altitude. because the major problem that we have seen is most of the drones from outside when we tested on the transmission lines do not work perfectly on a 4 thousand meter altitude with the wind wind and humidity and other stuffs. So it becomes a very interesting test bed for drone testing And we hope that, you know, our listeners are I hope to collaborate for any enthusiasts to technical expertise to companies who wants to collaborate with us on drones to look at all these verticals use cases, design and engineering and manufacturing.

Beautiful. So you took what was in some ways a challenge or a vulnerability, the mountainous terrain, of Bhutan and turned it into an opportunity to innovate and really become a world leader as your for instance, learning about this power line monitoring through drone and building an AI, you become a world leader And then you export it, which brings in revenue to Bhutan and helps grow the economy. So that is just, like, you I think you get a sense listeners why I'm so excited to have you on the show. And then we're gonna talk about how your the the profits that are coming from that are being used in just a second. But anything else you would add, I think our listeners are starting to get a sense of draw. We can't cover all, I mean, 21 portfolio companies, all this different innovation. But anything else you'd say at that top level about the companies or the initiatives themselves, and then we're gonna go into how you're syncing this up with your values and trying to support the people of Vuitton through these initiatives. But anything else at that top level that somebody would wanna understand about the kinds of companies and the kinds of initiatives that you're working on.

Thanks, Paul. So being deporting in investments, it's important for us to ensure that we bring along or take along or provide that opportunity for the next generation entrepreneurs and the current private sector. So as much as we talk about innovation, whether it's in drone or national digital identity, which I'm very, very excited about and many other projects. And all these are in incubation phase. Some of them have gone up to the level of, you know, swinging it as a startup. For example, our national digital identity will soon have as a startup, which will be another subsidiary company of DHX. But that's one portfolio. The other bigger portfolio, the 22 different companies we hold and manage and is something that I do want to quickly talk Bhutan. and and we are hoping to look at how do we expand these portfolio of companies. So we hold companies in energy, the 2002.5 Gigawatt of high hydro that we generate in Bhutan is held as a generating company. We hold airlines. We hold the telcos. We hold the banks. Bhutan all but we do have competitors in all of these 2 and in some of these 2. And these are the companies that established that provides the revenue for DHI and and and what we actually remit to the government. But then the next gen of companies that we talked about, the innovation side, we're really looking at 5 different areas And one is definitely definitely on tech that we talked about couple of projects. But now we are also looking to expand using technology how we can be more efficient in various energy and resources, whether it's solar, whether it's wind, and and other stuffs. The other area is mining and minerals. So we also are looking for partners looking for ideas from universities to establish companies to startups or individuals, professionals around the world to see how we can build up sustainable green mining in terms of some of some important materials. So we are very happy to explore that. The other area that we are working on is also on digital assets. beyond, of course, beyond digital assets than infrastructure and management. So these are the 4 5 areas that we work on and we would love to hear. We would love to collaborate with individuals and passionate minds around the world to see how we can leverage leverage in these areas using tech, using experience around the world to build the next gen portfolio of companies, which serves put on, but more important to at least solve problems for societies around the world.

And, listeners, I'll put links to the national digital identity projects, some of the big holding companies, the annual report that you heard me, there's so much to go deep here because they've been out since 2007. So look in the show notes for link for more information. So let's do this. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsor. And when we come back, I wanna hear a little bit more, like, what does it look like now? And how do we sync this up with the values of why you're doing all this to benefit the Bhutan needs population, which is just mind boggling to have with the scale you're doing it and the care to values and a little bit about where you're going. But before we do that, just a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

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So welcome back everybody. In the second part of the show, we like get a little more granular about what does it look like now? And how is this having positive impact? That's why you listen listeners. Right? I know we're not just talking about tech for tech. sake. Right? So how is this benefiting the Bhutan knees people now? And how is it gonna be benefit going forward? because there's some really exciting things in the works. So talk to us a little bit about the values. When you go to the website or you look at the annual report, there's such a It's a very robust part. It's not just, like, a little simple. Here's our values. Okay. Move on next. You've really thought about the values and a big part of it is to make life better for the people of Bhutan. Talk to us a little bit about the thinking and and how does that sync up with these really world class high-tech initiatives that you're bringing for?

Right. So if you if you google Bhutan, you will see cross national happiness. So we have always as a governance philosophy,

the backbone of our governance has always been -- And if somebody never heard of that, what what does that even mean? Gross National Happiness.

So gross national happiness is a, you know, a philosophy. It's it's a it's a mechanism of how we govern ourselves in a way. where equal emphasis is given for environment, good governance, economy, and culture preservation of culture. So what that effectively also means is we just don't look at GDP as a measure of growth. We look at what makes a human whole in terms of purpose of life. So that's that's that has been the philosophy of governance in Bhutan. So that's what probably brings in the brings in the thought process in designing our economic pathways moving forward. So with this opportunity of you know, utilizing or leveraging computing power that and the technological breakthroughs that's happening it's it was also important for us to kind of quickly rethink about what are the aspirations of the next generation? You know? And how do we ensure that we are within the philosophy of Cross National Happen is GNH. But at the same time, we are also able to provide the opportunities that technology brings. So that that was a fundamental thought process. Have we solved that problem completely? Of course not. But we are in the journey of trying to leverage tech but also build our life wholesome. I mean, when we were when we are brainstorming, even today, we'll be we discuss, you know, aspects of being human. We discuss aspects of ethics in the age of AI. what would it mean? Could could Bhutan actually with its G And H values could it contribute in the in the world of AI from the ethics part of it? Is that a unique selling position or a unique value that we bring in in the world where everything is decided by machines. We are almost largely there, and and and only gonna have an exponential growth. So what can Bhutan bring in over there is also a very foundational question we keep asking our asking ourselves when we brainstorm. But the question that you asked, Paul, is very interesting and very even personal for me because when we started creating the Innotech department, which would probably lay which is probably lay down the foundation for Bhutan as an innovation hub, Bhutan as a startup economy. we I think our tagline is developing technology with values. And when we say that, we really want to work on tech that solves problem of individuals and societies. And even if you look at the programs that, you know, applied research programs that we have started, and trying to build companies, Bhutan we are very grounded by the fact that any any tech that we use to solve problems we ensure that that it brings in value or happiness if I may say to society or individuals. So even if I digress a little bit Bhutan talk about, you know, the fact 23 conference we are doing, where we are expecting about to 300 plus international guests, we have designed the program in such a way that international participants in collaboration with Putin's locals will be spread around the country for about a week, 10 days, look at the problems at the grassroots use tech and, you know, experience and creativity and philosophy to find solutions in the villages and then congregate at the capital city to talk about that experience by that by those diverse groups And that's been one of the major program very different from many of the fab events around the world. So I hope we are able to build an image, build a brand that tech can be developed in put on in collaboration with experts from around the world, which solves problems in Bhutan and which we can take out of the country to develop economy Bhutan also to solve problems around the world.

Yeah. No. Again, I'll put a link to the fab 23 conference. Check it out folks. It's really quite innovative. And One of the things I'd be curious who'd while, like, certainly as a country, on a national basis, the commitment to values, whether it's through the gross national happiness lens or what you see in the core values when you look at drug holdings and how you talk about it on your website in in your annual report. Do you feel like that gives you an opportunity to kinda, like, play above your weight class? right, would be one way to talk about it. You know, like, your partnership with MIT. That's a world class institution and maybe other developing economies might have a harder time forming those kind of partnerships. Do we're we're hearing around the world, especially for young people that having values in initiatives gets, you know, garners more attention. Consumers are looking for that, especially consumers. under 35, under 40. Do you find that it allows you to have access to partnerships and innovation and the desire to collaborate that if a country had less robust commitment to values, it might be harder given the size and the state of the economy that Bhutan started with in 2000 and so.

what's interesting is the way I I see what's the meaning of values. And I think if you So let's let's take a step back and look at what's the meaning of values. I mean, Personally, I think we all evolve as humans. Civilizations evolve collapse, we rebuild, we evolve again, and kind of values and definition of values, what's wrong and right in space and time lines kind of keeps changing. In terms of understanding what value is in this part of the world and other part of the world, could be completely different, and and we all adhere to our values. And and now thinking in the future, I don't know how values will be defined. But I think one being human in the age of AI would be very important, I would say. And how do we ensure that Bhutan experience of living in a close knit society, how can we bring that into the age of AI, whatever that means moving forward, has been a fundamental question. to us. And we keep that as a central theme as much as we talk about AI or as much as we talk about power systems or telecom or or policy and regulations. The other point about values is also how committed are we to change And this is something that put on in the recent last 2 to 3 years, especially post COVID, I think, our commitment to change has been phenomenal. Very interesting, if you look at quadruple helix model of you know, the government, the academia, the industry, and the society, if you read about Bhutan, in the last one and a half year, we have had fundamental changes in all the full wheels of the society. of the of the of the country. We have had foundational fundamental changes in academia from primary secondary and tertiary education. huge changes in the government for agility to meet the requirements and expectations of the younger generation huge change in industry side where we, as DHI, play a small part in terms of corporate governance to mindset change in the way we operate our business. And, of course, in society, we have had a huge changes. You can you can refer to basic programs in Bhutan to we starting the national service next year, which is gonna be very unique of national service with skill development programs. So these are commitment as a society as a nation to change. I also define these as values. So in a way, the way we evolve from and and we interact with government, academia, and society, and industry together with a firm commitment to values, with a firm commitment for progress as a nation. All this stimulates hopefully, towards and towards a very sustainable, enjoyable, and happy economy moving forward where Bhutan is trendy can solve problems of the world, but at the same time, also very rooted to its grassroots rooted to its values of the time that we live in.

So let's so the values is a big part of it. Let's talk a little bit about, like, has it actually moved the needle. Right? So so what does drug holdings look like now in terms of how many employees work directly for drug or its portfolio companies. And what's been the economic impact thus far of the work you've been doing?

So the holding investments today, we have about 8000 employees with us who work directly for us. But, of course, because we are in various sectors. It just it also spurs a lot of other other sectors. And we work with these eight thousand people together, but also influence the lives of many families together. In terms of, you know, economic activity or in economic contribution to the country. We contribute about 20% of GTP at this point. And -- 1% of the

entire economy of Bhutan, one of these companies in some way is contributing to. Right.

Wow. So so that's that's that's an impact, but Again, I think impact in terms of GDP is one way to look at it. I hope we can make better impact. I hope we can be more sustainable as a country. and as, of course, for DHI contributing to the economic success of the country. But more importantly, we hope to create portfolios of companies that really solve the next generation problems. And that's where I see you know, collaboration, discussions with the best minds around the world and passionate minds around the world, creative minds around

Yeah. Listeners, I'm just sitting with that. I don't think I've ever interviewed somebody who'd well who's contributed 20% to the various things that are doing contribute 20 percent of a country's GDP. I I'm just going back We're about to publish episode 300 and have talked to some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs, but I don't think I've ever talked to somebody who's having as much impact in a country as you all are. So just to deep out to what you're doing and listeners do not miss the scale of that. you're very humble with well to just kinda slide by that pretty quickly, but it's my job to point out significant factors. This is impact at scale. in a way that a lot of people talk about, but not everybody is able to actually achieve. So I do hope you'll go pay attention to what's on the website. go take a look at the super fab conference on what's happening there because it's an incredible opportunity to see something and be a part of something on the ground. that's having impact at scale. Like I said, I I talked to amazing people all over the world, but the the level of moving the needle is as high here or higher than anybody I've ever interviewed. So just to deep out to what you and your team are doing, Mitchell. So as we start to wind down, I could hang out with you all day. You're doing incredible work, and you're busy, and our listeners are busy too. Give us a sense of, like, where is DHI going? If you look ahead 5 years or 10 years, what are some of the things you're working towards now?

In terms of DHI going forward, as I as I mentioned, we we need to adapt and be child to look at our regional interest. We have a great friend with India, a friendship with India, our neighbors a 90 80 to 90 percent of our trade is with India. So in in a sense of how DHI grows moving forward, it has been mostly, you know, consolidated, and now we're looking at some of the new generation of companies. But one of our targets moving forward is to see how we can have a regional and an international presence in next 2 to 3 years, and, hopefully, in 5 to 7 years, a national regional and national impact. What I mean by that is we DHI, we want to go international. We want to be present in the region And one of the recent, you know, partnerships that we are trying to look for are in the areas of tech are in the areas of digital asset and are in the areas of energy and resources. So in one word or one sentence, Paul, I think the way I see PHI moving forward from here is making an international regional and international presence. how we do that, what we do for it, we are you know, that's that's something that we are working on. And making a presence in India, making a presence in Singapore, presence in Australia are immediate. thoughts and also engaging Botini's diaspora in some of these countries is also something that we are looking very closely apart from, of course, tapping the minds of the, you know, best minds around the world and their region is always always my personal interest and would love to see how how we can bring in more passionate minds in in DHI nationally and internationally to brainstorm and solve problems that has an impact that has a value.

as you were talking as well, my language would be strategic partnerships. Like, now that you've gotten some really strong track record. It's like scaling India's becoming if it's not already one of the largest economies in the world. Right? So so developing Singapore or, you know, with MIT, these really very robust strategic partnerships to help scale, the impact that you're having. Is that language that feels at all aligned to you?

Absolutely. I think, you know, we have some strategic partnerships with MIT. We have some strategic partnership with some of the companies in India. And how how do we scale that up? how do we scale it up to make impact or a dent large enough to be noticed for contribution to the society contribution for values. But at the same time, you know, if you solve the right problem and if you contribute to society in the right direction, of course, the by product, it it it helps your economy grow. So you're right, Paul, looking for strategic partnerships and scaling it up.

So last question for you as well. Our listeners are social entrepreneurs, who are looking to have impact at scale. We've given some really good suggestions. And please, listeners, go check out the website Go check out the fab 23 conference, and this is a fabulous example. If there was something you wanted our listeners to know about what you've learned about having impact at scale, and we haven't touched on it yet. Or just something you want our listeners to know in general about DHI and what you've built and things you've learned while building it. And we haven't touched on it yet. What would that be? What would those suggestions be or that topic b that you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to wind down?

I think one of the things that come to my mind course, I can talk about the national digital identity, how that actually forms the, you know, the foundation for digitization in the society because we can give a 100% accurate identity on the Internet. Internet was never built for identity there with an identity there. But the decentralize that entity actually provides that. And so having worked on, you know, a project as such, which with with a very recent phenomena technology or blockchain. I was also involved in my earlier life or my earlier career in electrifying the whole country when I joined the power sector in Bhutan in 2002 as a young engineer, Bhutan was about 35% electrified. By 2013, we were a 100%, almost 100% electrified. So our journey, you know, one was the technical and financing part and implementation, but then also the experience of having met people in the far flung villages in early 2000 that, I mean, shaped up a very different cord in my if I talk about myself in a way, in my own experience of having experienced the meeting of people, having experienced the you know, aspiration of people in the far flung villages. This was early 2000. But today, if you look at one thing that resonates with me is when we try to build industry, how do we collaborate with universities, how do we collaborate with academia, I think that has been a very interesting and a very important realization for me that we cannot leave the academia alone as we try to build industries. So the experience of talking to students, this experience of getting feedback from the students, as we add 1 more proof of concept project in the industry side, then when we get the feedback and when we talk to the students and how do they see their you know, the learning process in the universities to contributing in the industry side during and after the academia session. And and all those conversations I have with the with the facilitators, the teachers, the lecturers, professors, and the students is amazing in terms of how we think in the industry side. I think this relates to any entrepreneur who's trying to do some you know, solve some problem. It could relate to any individual in the academia side who is trying to solve a problem. But putting these two people or these two groups of people together, you get an amazing conversation and amazing ideas that you can synthesize in building your policy or building your framework of moving forward in building an economy.

thank you so much for being on the show today. You're doing incredible work, and it's just an honor to share it with our listeners.

Thank you so much, Paul. It is a pleasure to be a part of this. Thank you all the listeners.

So, again, listeners, check out the show notes. Lots of links because there's awesome things going on and go check it out. And before we go, just a quick reminder, we love listener suggesting topics and guess. I have a couple of them sitting in my inbox right now. So if you have an idea go check out the Aware printer's website. And on our contact page, we try to be really transparent. Here's what we're looking for. And if you take a look at that and you say it's a fit, you think it's a fit, please send your ideas in. So for now, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.