Bill Gates may partner tech-driven social projects in India

Co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, sees potential in the start-up market in India.

New Delhi, Nov 17: Bill Gates met the Prime Minister of India-Narendra Modi and expressed partnership interests in his technology-driven social projects.

The co-founder of American technology giant Microsoft met Union minister for communications and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday and said that he would consider partnering with start-ups providing services like e-health, e-agriculture and e-payment to the lower level of the pyramid.

After his meeting with Prasad, Gates said, "Its very exciting times in India and some of these digital platform opportunities are quite amazing. The government has invested in manpower, it has invested in payment banks, and the payment infrastructure, so now is the case for building the applications on top of those, we need to work on the health issue, agriculture applications, etc."

Meanwhile Prasad said, "I disclosed to him the entire architecture of Aadhaar, Aadhaar enabled payments that we have created, we also looked into digital health, and also gave him the whole outline of Digital India."

Meeting the PM on Wednesday, Gates applauded him for the demonetisation move, saying that this will help the economy to move from shadow to transparency. Calling it a bold move, he further said, "Digital transactions will rise dramatically here. In next several years India will become the most digitised economy, not just by size but by percentages. A more concerted shift to digital transactions will further enhance transparency and reduce leakage. India has all the pieces in place for a compelling vision for digital financial inclusion."

[Read: Bill Gates hails demonetisation, calls it a bold move]

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