By Kowthamraj VS

The back to the future movie series predicted flying cars becoming the norm by October 2015. The real future in 2015 did not hint at the possibility of a commercial flying car. A year later, Uber launched Uber Air and the Uber elevate conference gave us a taste of what a future with flying cars would look like.

Imagine reducing a 90-plus minute stop-and-go commute from Gurgaon to your office in central New Delhi to a mere six minutes. That future has become conventional wisdom in 2020, as hundreds of commercial companies, multiple cities, and several hundred startups are pivoting into “Urban Aerial Mobility (UAM) aka the flying cars” to capture a slice of the potential trillion-dollar market. There is a reason why Uber chose New Delhi along with Silicon Valley (San Jose) to study the potential of air-mobility.

The MoveinSynq report titled ‘Travel Time Report Q1 2019 vs Q1 2108’ states that an average Indian spends 7% of the day in commute to office averaging less than 3 minutes per kilometre.

On-demand aviation has the potential to radically improve urban mobility, giving people back the productivity lost in their daily commutes. Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to combat transportation congestion. A network of small e-VTOLs (electric- Vertical Takeoff and Landing Vehicles) will enable rapid, reliable transportation between suburbs and cities and, ultimately, within cities. Just like in e-3-wheelers, it is inevitable that India will come up with a localised solution.

The development of infrastructure to support an urban VTOL network will likely have significant cost advantages over heavy-infrastructure approaches such as roads, bridges and tunnels. Uber and other actors have proposed repurposing of the tops of parking garages. Even unused land surrounding highway interchanges could form the basis of an extensive, distributed network of “vertiports” (VTOL hubs with multiple takeoffs and landing pads, as well as charging infrastructure) or single-aircraft “vertistops” (a single VTOL pad with minimal infrastructure) atop a qualified building. As costs for traditional infrastructure options continue to increase, the lower cost and increased flexibility provided by these new approaches may provide compelling options for cities and states around the world.

Varon Vehicles Corp is a US company that chose to implement its first UAM systems in Latin America because it is faster and simpler. Felipe Varon, CEO Varon Vehicles says, “Without cutting any corners in safety and certification requirements, we can implement a much less complicated concept for airspace integration in developing countries… India, just like most countries in Latin America, is a perfect example of a part of the world where UAM can happen faster and tackle urgent needs for radical mobility solutions.”

UAM, thus, has the potential to save trillions of dollars in eliminating a fraction of new roads and fly-overs from crowding our space-starved cities and save another few hundred billion by preventing congestion and resultant productivity loss.

Though urban aviation is not going to take a sizable share out of on-road vehicle sales, they will free-up the arterial roads. It took until 2016 for someone to bet on flying cars, not because the technology to propel a car to the sky was not available, but due to the lack of cheap high-energy-density batteries. This has changed in the last five years.

The technologies that are required to make intra-city air mobility are not that different from current know-how in e-mobility or aerospace engineering. Though integrating multiple components into an aerial vehicle is relatively straightforward; the real challenge lies in creating an ecosystem encompassing infrastructure, standards, policy, and the associated sky-worthy component capabilities in the supply chain. Just like on-road e-mobility—the challenge is not building an e-VTOL, but building a compelling and desirable e-VTOL experience.

Developing, manufacturing, and deploying electric urban aerial vehicles will give Indian e-mobility value-chain a high-value sector to subsidise R&D for their on-road offerings and will create concomitant aerial economy opportunities in software, monitoring, controls, and civil-engineering. Aviation is a $1.5 trillion industry with aeroplanes, fuels, engines, and airline operators combined. Electric aviation will be India’s pathway to leap-frog half-a-century of western R&D in traditional aviation. If we play our cards right, over time, an alternative for the Boeing-Airbus duopoly can be catalysed in India, as we will eventually become the third-largest aviation market for long-haul flights.

By a series of consistent and coordinated efforts, India should earn the right to be a global hub for the urban aerial economy. It was China and not the developed countries which boast the best ease of doing business rankings that introduced electric mobility. Brazil led the world in the Bio-fuel revolution.

Changing perceptions and redefining what’s possible in Indian mobility requires indomitable will and consistency by the policymakers along with the emergence of several heroes in the private sector with sizeable risk capacity.

The author is Young Professional in NITI Aayog

By NK Singh

The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it”, writes Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th-century German philosopher known for his essays on the role of human will in creating the world that we experience—in a sense, a kind of European derivative of our concept of the Veil of Maya. The sum of this experience, at seventy, “enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties”—it gives us the panoramic view from the peak.

This is an important perspective. Our prime minister turns 70 tomorrow at a time when the rate of change, bringing both risks and opportunities, seems to be accelerating on all fronts. His simple, straightforward style is well known. His memory—for facts large and small—is legendary. This is equally true of his acuity in filtering through the noise with his legendary implementational capabilities while micromanaging to a fault of which examples are multiple: the iconic Narmada Project pumping water against gravity to bring succour and relief to the water-starved areas of Kutch; and, equally, the implementation of the iconic Statue of Unity.

Yet, it is also clear that this 70 is no time for him to rest and assume that the hard-won understanding of the present will, in fact, enable wisdom for navigating the future—the pinnacle on the horizon. “Those who stare at the past have their backs to the future”, notes the oft-repeated saying. Our complex world has forks in the road, not just oscillations around a stable centre. Change is non-linear: interconnectedness—and interdependency—is a fact of life. The next pinnacle will thus, be a different matter than the previous peaks.

Prime minister Modi has demonstrated his capacity for strategic, forward-looking vision on multiple occasions over the years. The Swacch Bharat Mission and the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, for example, took a creative and strategic approach to improve our nation’s health and productivity by directly addressing environmental health risks in taking up issues considered social taboos like ODF and sanitary pads. With his continuing belief in fiscal rectitude, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code tackle the two challenging frontiers of the banking system to extend access to financial services on the one end and shore up the foundations of bank solvency on the other. Again, moving beyond platitudes to address the root barriers to the world we want to see.

Looking forward, he is conscious of the need to navigate three new unfolding complex realities: rapid environmental change; shifting power dynamics between regions, actors, individuals and sectors; and the digital revolution from the Fourth Industrial Revolution to the opening up of new realms of intelligence. The earth that we once thought of as beyond our influence is now very clearly on the new trajectory of the Anthropocene. This has implications for temperature, rainfall, food and water security and biodiversity, among others. The rapid pace at which we are now able to analyse and influence myriad aspects of society, environment, economy, infrastructure and even individual lives has offered a glimpse of the powers that we can use to rise to the occasion. Modi is committed to harness the digital revolution in a comprehensive sense and to build greater collective security. And, how do we adjust to a new world where cybersecurity threats can arise from literally anywhere? These two trends are unfolding within—and influencing—a time of great change in the relationships that structure and reshape our collaboration. Modi’s belief in the PRAGATI (Pro Active Governance and Timely Implementation) platform is part of these same endeavours.

At the risk of presenting a birthday request rather than a birthday felicitation: what are some of the ways in which he can truly use the perspective of 70s in the decades toward 80 and beyond?

He will recognise the need for three qualities of leadership in the coming years.

The ability to remember the past, but also see the present very clearly. We are entering into a delicate era of shifting geopolitical sands. Our past alliances and interactions matter—friends are friends—but navigating new partnerships and initiatives that help us tackle emerging global challenges will require clear-eyed vision. This is true in internal matters as much as external affairs: we need new forms of a collaborative partnership between the Centre, the states, and local governments.

A leader of his stature knows how to work within the constraints of reality—whether fiscal, chemical or biological—and, at the same time, inspire others to unite in making the best choices among hard choices that these constraints dictate. We are on the edge of one of the greatest economic upheavals that the world has seen in recent memory, as Covid-19 and our efforts to halt the pandemic have accelerated existing trends to the point of discomfort and exposed hidden vulnerabilities. Prime minister Modi cannot wish this reality away and must build the support for an innovative strategy that can mirror the hopes and wishes of his countrymen.

Finally, we need a visionary with the energy and freshness of perspective to forge ahead in a world that could be seen as offering both opportunities and risks. The prime minister will be the first to recognise that, by hindsight, joy, beauty, and a common humanity are at the foundation of all that we have tried to do as a nation over the centuries. The horizon lies ahead.

Happy Birthday.

The author is Chairman, 15th finance commission
Views are personal

India needs to cut dependence on capital from key destinations such as the US and China for its start-ups and become “self-reliant” by having several large domestic growth funds powered by local capital to support its unicorns, the parliamentary standing committee on finance said in a report, seemingly echoing the government’s latest Aatmanirbhar initiative.

Interestingly, of the 21 Indian start-up unicorns (with a combined valuation of about $73.2 billion) that featured in the Hurun Global Unicorn Index released in August, as many as 11 have got funding from Chinese investors like Alibaba, Tencent and DST Global.

Japanese investor SoftBank has investments in nine of these unicorns, while the US’ Tiger Global has invested in five. Recently, Tiger Global also invested in food delivery start-up Zomato, while Byju’s secured funding from US-based Bond.

The committee, chaired by former minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha, held that Small Industries Development Bank of India’s (Sidbi) fund-of-funds vehicle be expanded and fully utilised to play an anchor investment role. Similarly, major banks should join hands to float a fund-of-funds and their exposure limits to start-ups need to be enhanced. Banks should also be allowed to invest in Category-III alterate investment funds (AIF).

Large financial institutions in India should also be encouraged to channelise a proportion of their investible surplus into domestic funds, which would bring in additional local capital for startup investments, the panel said.

For this purpose, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) and the National Pension Scheme (NPS) may invite bids from professional fund managers for running a fund-of-funds programme. Sidbi would be eligible to participate as well.

“Further, the removal of restrictions such as the minimum corpus of AIF being an eligibility criteria for pension fund investment and requirement to invest only in listed AIFs, would considerably ease roadblocks for investment by NPS in AIFs,” the report said. Pension funds can start by allocating small percentage of their corpus into AIFs and then gradually increase it as they gain more experience, the panel suggested.

Even the insurance regulator should give insurance companies the latitude to invest in fund-of-funds. Further, investments by insurance companies in AIFs must be carved out under a separate category while calculating the applicable exposure limits and must not be clubbed with other investments under ‘unapproved investments’, the panel said.

Foreign development finance institutions may also be encouraged to participate with local asset management companies to set up fund-of-funds structure or direct venture capital/private equity funds, particularly in social impact, healthcare and venture/start-up sectors.