Nikhil Kamath x Bill Gates | People by WTF | Ep. #1

[upbeat music] I'm not going to ask you anything generic or anything I've heard you answer already. Uh, I'm going to be a little selfish and ask you questions that, uh, I try to answer for myself a lot of the time. Maybe like, you know, uh, there's no better person to learn from. [upbeat music] So we do this once in a month, Bill, and, uh, we primarily cater to the young entrepreneur in India. Uh, the idea is to get really good people on the show and help a young twenty-year-old boy or girl in India who's looking to become an entrepreneur, give them, uh, advice, guidance, uh, help them learn from what you might have learned already. I've met Bill a bunch of times. I think the very first time I met you was, uh, when I caught you at WEF and bugged you for an hour with random questions a few years ago. I joined Bill's pledge last year.

Yeah. Thank you.

Uh, the one thing I want to clarify is a lot of Indians, when they hear about an Indian sign on to the pledge... I think there's four of us, right? We're all from Bangalore, and all of us are friends. Uh, people somehow assume that the money is going out of India, the money which is going to make society better. Uh, it's actually not the case. And, uh, I, I would also like to say, I think The Gates Foundation, who I've worked with in the past, uh, we've done a school project together, we're doing something around, uh, malnutrition together. I think the impact and the effort that they're putting into India in improving society, uh, is, is, uh, is great, and I hope you guys continue this association with India for a long time. Do you want to talk a little bit about your relationship with India and how it's evolved over the last many years?

Well, I mean, I've had a fantastic relationship with India, starting with the, the Microsoft experience, where, you know, we hired some very smart IT graduates, brought them to Seattle. Later, they go back, uh, create a development center for us, uh, that's now in four locations, twenty-five thousand people. And, of course, a lot of the amazing people I work with and have so much fun, uh, in the Microsoft success with are, uh, part of the team we have hired from India. You know, top of that list is Satya-

Mm-hmm.

... uh, who now, uh, is doing a, a great job as CEO. So in my digital first career, uh, the connection to India was, uh, fun and made a huge difference, um, in what the company was able to achieve. It was during that time that I was kind of learning, oh, wow, India is such a study in contrasts, you know. You know, first class in so many ways, but still a lot of poverty, uh, and challenges. And, uh, you know, I was beginning to think, "Okay, how do I give this money back?" Uh, together with, uh, Melinda, and so she came over as we were starting to do foundation work. Um, I start the foundation, I fund it in the year two thousand, so I'm forty-five years old and still, um, full time. I stayed full time for another, uh, eight years. Uh, but India becomes, you know, an important place for us because we realized that vaccines, uh, were this missing, uh, thing, and it was a crime that these, uh, diarrhea rotavirus vaccines were getting to the rich kids. So, you know, I get to know Serum, I learn about making cheap, uh, vaccines. Uh, you know, the Indian government at the time had not adopted new vaccines for a long time. You know, so, uh, how do we, as foreigners, uh, form partnerships and not come across, uh, in the wrong way? So it's a heck of a learning curve. Uh, another big program we had here at the start, called Avahan, uh, was about making sure that the HIV epidemic didn't explode, you know, by making sure that, um, the sex workers were insisting on condom use and so that the, the numbers would stay small. And that was also quite successful and very much a partnership with the government. Um, you know, other than the US, this is the country we spend the most money in. Uh, we have a fantastic team of people here.