India has incredible engineering power, says CEO of Silicon Valley incubator

Describing India as an ”incredible engineering power”, the head of a top Silicon Valley-based incubator has said some of the best companies in the world like Google and Microsoft will be born in the country if it can embrace this potential. Saeed Amidi, CEO and founder of Plug and Play — a global innovation platform aiming to connect early-stage investors, startups and the world’s largest corporations — also praised Indians as highly talented and smart people. He said the founders of 50 per cent of the startups are from India. “I can tell you more than 50 per cent of these startups that are either physically in this building, in Plug and Play or that we invest in are from India by stats (statistics),” he said. Responding to a question, Saeed said that from the research that he has done, India is an incredible engineering power. “If I’m not wrong, there are close to four million new graduates per year in software engineering. And I think that is the power that you have in India. If we embrace that power, some of the best companies in the world like Google and Microsoft will be born in India,” Saeed said in response to a question. Early this week, Plug and Play hosted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for an interactive session on AI and other related technologies. Indians, he said are very talented and are very smart. “Generally, what we have learned is that let’s say with the million dollars of investments, the entrepreneurs that are immigrants, they take the company and the technology much farther. Quite frankly, they work harder, they work smarter. We are very pleased to find in the founding team, a few immigrants, especially from India,” he said. Observing the success of China, he said one thing that India could improve on is infrastructure. “It should be simplified a little bit, the laws can be simplified, especially for foreign investment and large corporations. But in India, the market is so big that it cannot be ignored,” he said.