Mr. Sanjeev Sinha Appointed Advisor for Rupees 98,000 Crores Ahmedabad-Mumbai High Speed Rail, Setting up an India-Japan High-tech Fund

Japan Railways has appointed Mr. Sanjeev Sinha as Advisor for Rupees 98,000 Crores project of Ahmedabad-Mumbai High Speed Rail. The project largely funded by low cost financing from Japan is planned to be built based on Japanese technology as well. The ground-breaking ceremony for the project is planned in Ahmedabad on Sept 14^th in presence of the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Sanjeev with Minister of Land Infra and Transport of Japan Mr. Ishii Kenichi

Mr. Sanjeev Sinha, hailing from Barmer Rajasthan in relative proximity to Ahmedabad and a graduate of IIT Kanpur, is a prominent Indian resident of Japan for 21 years.

"With an interest rate of negligible 0.1% over an exceptionally long 50 years term and a no-repayment moratorium for first 15 years, the funding from Japan for the High Speed Rail, called Shinkansen in Japan, is almost like a grant based on standard financial valuation calculations", says Mr. Sinha formerly with Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Securities, UBS Investment Bank and as Chief Country Representative in Japan for Tata Asset Management and Tata Realty and Infrastructure, a private equity fund. Mr. Sinha further added that given the safety issues of Indian Railways we can learn from Japanese Shinkansen which has a fabulous record of zero fatal accidents in its operations over more than 50 years despite very intricate passenger friendly operations amidst earthquakes, typhoons and a very difficult hilly terrain of Japan.

To support the huge technology collaboration efforts Mr. Sinha is also setting up an India Japan Technology Collaboration Fund as President of Research Institute of Next Generation AI, nicknamed RingAI.jp based in Tokyo. RingAI.jp is co-organizing a Startup Master Class http://www.startupmasterclasspune.in jointly with IIT Kanpur Alumni Association of Pune on Sept 16^th awarding and inviting the winning AI and High-tech ICT entrepreneurs for an investment road show in Japan later this year involving Japanese government agencies and corporates. The Pune event, including a Japan pavilion, is also expected to be attended by Goa Chief Minister Mr. Manohar Parrikar and Mr. Baba Kalyani, Chairman and MD Bharat Forge and also on the Board of Hitachi, major conglomerate of Japan involved in the Ahmedabad Mumbai Shinkansen Project and the operator of recently developed High Speed Railways in England.

Sanjeev with Mr. Suresh Prabhu Sanjeev

The appointment of Mr. Sinha as Advisor to Japan Railways followed the launch of Mr. Sinha’s 3^rd book “Amazing India Business” published in Japanese by Japan’s largest economic publications Nikkei. The book was launched at the Parliamentarians’ Building of Japan with promoters including the Mr. Ishii Kenchii Cabinet Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Japan, the concerned ministry for Shinkansen and related Urban Development, Mr. Shiozaki Yasuhisa Cabinet Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, Mr. Kishida Fumio Cabinet Minister of Foreign Affairs and Mr. Hayashi Yoshimasa now Cabinet Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology including 20 other prominent members of parliaments, corporate executives and academicians from Japan. From India, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, now Minister of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Ashish Chuahan CEO and MD BSE, Dr. Rajiv Kumar Member of the Board of Reserve Bank of India and now Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog and Mr. RC Bhargawa Chairman Maruti Suzuki were among other promoters of the book.

“Amazing India Business” from Nikkei builds upon earlier two books of Mr. Sinha, “Amazing India”, introducing socio-economic background of India to Japan, and “India Japan Partnership”, on the bilateral potential, both also in Japanese from major publishers of Japan. In the current book Mr. Sinha noted that given the strategic importance of the bilateral relations there are many high-level initiatives by the two governments, but due to the lack of people-to-people contacts and mutual awareness there is a chicken-and-egg problem in the implementation. Japanese manufacturers need a high-quality infrastructure, services like logistics and skilled human resource in India. Drawing lessons from past examples, Mr. Sinha emphasizes the need of and suggests specific Corporate-Academic-Government collaboration models to implement holistic solutions in the forms of Industrial Zones, India-Japan Collaboration Funds and dedicated human resource development efforts. Given the strategic and long-term nature of the solutions, Mr. Sinha also urges the two governments to play more hands on and significant roles with Japanese government financing the bilateral initiatives with their low cost, socially friendly and long-term funding capabilities and Indian government developing helpful policies and frameworks to facilitate collaboration among the companies and people on both sides. Supported by his high education and deep experience in both finance and technology Mr. Sinha also suggests specific mechanisms and structures for the financing efforts in order to be most effective in bilateral relations.

Sanjeev with Kishida Foreign Minister of Japan

Ahmedabad-Mumbai Shinkansen Project is also poised to be such a holistic collaboration model for a large regional-urban development, with huge benefits for the masses, Mr. Sinha emphasized.

Mr. Sinha takes pride in his journey from a very humble beginning. From a desert town of Barmer, Rajasthan, his mother being a government school teacher in a small village, Mr. Sinha was the first from the district to go to the prestigious IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kanpur after his local high school.

After his integrated masters in Physics and working in Indian conglomerate Godrej, Mr. Sinha came to Japan to join GenTech for R&D in Artificial Intelligence in 1996 leading to now Mobileye, world’s leading Automated Driving Systems company started in Japan-Israel collaboration.

Acquiring another master degree in Finance, Mr. Sinha built a career in Finance industry working with Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Securities, UBS and then as Chief Country Representative for Tata Asset Management and Tata Realty and Infra in Japan raising about a billion USD for investments to India.

Along the way, Mr. Sinha built and headed many new platforms for India Japan collaboration as Founding President IIT Alumni Association Japan, Founding President TiE Tokyo and Founding President Sun and Sands Group.

Promoting bilateral relations, Mr. Sinha has been a regular commentator on national TV, Columnist on newspapers like Nikkei and Asahi, frequent speaker at top industry bodies like Keizaidoyukai and chambers of commerce, served as an Advisor to Nagareyama City and Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) and as a visiting/guest faculty to University of Tokyo, Keio University, Waseda, Kyushu University, Housei University, ICU, National University of Yokohama and International University of Japan. Mr. Sinha is also on the Board of Management at Indus University in Ahmedabad and an Advisor to renowned Kyoto University.

Over the two decades, Mr. Sinha has been promoting important bilateral interactions among the industrialists, Ministers/Members of Parliaments, bureaucrats and academicians between the two countries with specific work on DMIC, Ahmedabad-Mumbai Shinkansen (now as an Advisor to Japan Railways for the 18 billion USD Shinkansen Project), Andhra Pradesh New Capital project, Kyoto-Kashi collaboration, IIT Gandhinagar collaboration with JAIST and Japanese financing of about 400 million USD for IIT Hyderabad among others.

Mr. Sinha has authored four books http://bit.ly/SanjeevAmazon in Japanese “Amazing India” by Shincho, “India Japan Partnership” by Kodansha, “Amazing India Business” by Nikkei and “Indian Way of Karma and Jugaad” by Shuwa.

In his first best seller book "Amazing India" from leading socio- economic publishers of Japan Shincho Publications, Mr. Sinha gave a holistic introduction of India covering the social, educational, economic, political and religious dynamics of the country in a way easy to understand by the Japanese readership. Mr. Sinha presented his own life story from a small and poor town of India to IIT and then the center of Tokyo to exemplify the global human resource potential of the country.

In his second book "India Japan Partnership" from Japan's largest publishers Kodansha, Mr. Sinha presented how the two countries strongly complement each other with Japan having the technology, capital and know-how that India needs and India offering the growth potential and global human resource that Japan needs. Mr. Sinha also emphasized the shared foundations of freedom, non-violence, democracy and intellectual property rights of the two countries which make the relationship to be trusted by the world and hence of a global significance in a win-win-win manner.

In his third book "Amazing India Business", from the world's largest financial newspaper group Nikkei, Mr. Sinha explains the challenges and suggests solutions for realizing the bilateral potential. Mr. Sinha noted that given the strategic importance of the bilateral relations there are many high-level initiatives by the two governments, but due to the lack of people-to-people contacts there is a chicken-and-egg problem in the implementation. Japanese manufacturers need a high-quality infrastructure, services like logistics and skilled human resource in India. Drawing lessons from past examples, Mr. Sinha emphasizes the need of and suggests specific Corporate-Academic-Government collaboration models to implement holistic solutions in the forms of Industrial Zones, India-Japan Collaboration Funds and dedicated human resource development efforts. Given the strategic and long-term nature of the solutions, Mr. Sinha also urges the two governments to play more hands on and significant roles with Japanese government financing the bilateral initiatives with their low cost, socially friendly and long-term funding capabilities and Indian government developing helpful policies to facilitate collaboration among the companies and people on both sides. Drawing from his high education and deep experience in both finance and technology Mr. Sinha also suggests specific mechanisms and structures for the financing efforts in order to be most effective in bilateral relations.

In his fourth book "The Indian Way of Karma and Jugaad" from Shuwa Publications, Mr. Sinha identifies the two extremes of Indian business culture and philosophy, and presented them as an interesting combination balancing the long term and short-term aspects with its challenges and advantages, again in a manner easy to comprehend by the Japanese reader.

After working on various initiatives of infrastructure and financing from Japan to India as a Director at PwC Japan, Mr. Sinha is building a holistic collaboration between the two countries as President of Research Institute of Next General AI (RingAI.jp) funding Indian AI, Fintech, IoT and High-Tech ICT startups in India-Japan domain, President of India Japan Partnership, President of Japan India Finance Research Institute (JIFRI), Director of Japan India Global Infrastructure Research Institute (JIGIRI), Advisor of Kuni UmiAsset Management and President of Sun and Sands Group.

Married with his Japanese wife, the couple has a daughter Maya named after the mother of Lord Buddha.