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?