Kharagpur (West Bengal), Aug 18 (IANS) Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, on Monday said it was inspiring to see how our young innovators are the torchbearers of Atmanirbhar Bharat, as he addressed IIT Kharagpur’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations at a packed house.

In a post on social media platform X, the billionaire industrialist said that at IIT Kharagpur, he witnessed the future of Bharat – brimming with confidence, courage and patriotism.

“The packed hall, unstoppable energy and non-stop cheers will always stay with me. On this historic occasion of IIT KGP’s Platinum Jubilee, it was inspiring to see how our young innovators are the torchbearers of Atmanirbhar Bharat,” said Gautam Adani.

“With their passion and brilliance, our nation’s growth story has no limits,” he added.

The Adani Group Chairman reminded students that the pace of technological disruption today is unlike any other period in history. “This is not transformation at 1X speed. It is 10X. It is 100X. And it is accelerating towards 1000X, as AI starts to build AI, LLMs start to write LLMs, robots start to build robots, and machines start to teach machines,” he noted.

The billionaire industrialist admitted that Indian corporates, too, bear responsibility for the “innovation deficit” and called for industry to invest more in research and development. “If we corporates do not step up, we will remain users of foreign breakthroughs and never be originators. This is a future we cannot accept,” he said.

Gautam Adani announced the Adani–IIT Platinum Jubilee Change Makers Fellowship, as well as the setting up of “living laboratories” in renewable energy, logistics and airports to allow IITians to test their ideas on real-world challenges.

The speech was peppered with anecdotes from his entrepreneurial journey — the building of Mundra Port against the odds, the expansion into energy, and the creation of India’s largest airport network. “I talk about Mundra, Khavda, our airports, because they were born not just from my spirit of entrepreneurship, but also from my optimism that the India growth story is unstoppable,” he said.

–IANS

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