Our global culture
has a fascinating new look to it, and it has to do with this guy, Indian actor and musician Diljit Dosanjh. Diljit's star has risen big time of late. He performed at Coachella last year.

He had incredible energy and had the audience in a foot-tapping,
head-banging spell. He had the audience in North America, where he toured this year, had the same experience
and performed in large, packed arenas. You know what is even more noteworthy?

Diljit does not perform in English. He performs entirely in Punjabi. Diljit's momentous rise is an indicator
of something fundamental happening in the world around us. The West for long has set the cultural
and intellectual agenda for the world.

But now, East is coming
to the limelight as well. Asia today claims a cultural
and intellectual authority all of its own. Yes, Diljit is popular, but even more than that, he takes pride in his own identity
and is not reduced to a stereotype.

He wears traditional Punjabi garb. Imagine an Indian pop star in the West
dressed in a turban and a kurta. My name is Neeraj Aggarwal and yes, I'm a slightly lesser known
Indian than Diljit.

(Laughter) With BCG, over the last 25 years, I have worked on tough problems
across industries and have spent time thinking
about big-picture trends. In my current role of leading
BCG’s Asia Pacific region,

I travel extensively, and I meet a wide range
of Asians across business, government, and civil society. Drawing on these experiences, I want to share with you
how Asia is changing in ways you may not have imagined, and what that could mean for all of us.

In the 20th century, most Americans got
a taste of Asian culture, but just a taste. If you went to a local mall, the taste may be
quite literally Panda Express. (Laughter) Asian cultures were somewhat exotic,
somewhat stereotyped, 

but never had the full context. Today, the scenario is vastly different. Recently, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh
won the Oscar for Best Actress. First Asian ever. Korean production "Squid Game" became Netflix's most popular show ever.

In the US, now there are
400 cricket leagues, and more than 200,000 kids
pick up a bat. So you may ask me, what is driving Asia's rising cultural
and intellectual expansion? It has to do with Asia's
rising economic power.

There have been massive changes
in the income pyramid. By 2030, Asia is expected to have five times
as many high-income households as it had in 2000. An absolute number
higher than the number in the West. Walk the streets of Mumbai,
Jakarta, or Shanghai.

You can feel it. It's everywhere. Millions of low-income households, they’re almost all digital natives. And they want more convenience and a better quality of life. No wonder Asian businesses strive
to be more innovative. Asia, of course, is incredibly diverse

and cannot be reduced
to a chart like this. I would argue the same diversity
makes this change even more profound and prolific. I started by talking about pop culture, but Asia's cultural and intellectual
influence extends to ideas and business innovation.

For long, we’ve equated Asian workers
with outsourcing and factories. Today, however, many Asians
are intellectual leaders. They're bypassing jobs
with Western multinationals to start new ventures. That's a big shift. Many kids who come to the West to study
are keen to go back

because they spot opportunities
in their own countries. And this is disrupting industries. Take fintech. Twenty years ago, fintech was almost
entirely a North American play, hardly visible in Asia. And living in India, it used to seem
like a travesty to me.

Why? Because back then, only a third
of the Indians had bank accounts, and many others used to pay outrageous
sums of money to moneylenders to live a basic life. It changed with the mass
adoption of cell phones.

Today, India's payment system UPI does about one trillion
dollars-plus of transactions. When I go to a local streetside
vegetable vendor, he says, "Please do UPI." The same change exists in Indonesia,
Philippines or Singapore.

Alipay in China does 100 times
more transactions than PayPal. Fintech in Asia is innovative, it's deeply entrenched and is not done growing. By 2030, I expect fintech revenues in Asia will be larger than any other
part of the world.

I could give you any number
of such examples across industries. Instead, I want to step back and talk about the broader
intellectual contributions that Asians are making. As a consultant, I deeply believe in the power of three. So I'm going to give you three of them.

(Laughter) First, Asian companies are investing
on developing at-scale solutions with different but attractive
unit economics. Take climate. Asia has more polluted cities
than any other part of the world, and it's roughly half
the planet's carbon footprint.

Driven by adversity, many Asian companies
are investing at scale in solar production and battery storage. In this case, China in particular
has invested massively, and in the last two decades brought down
the cost of solar panels by 95 percent.

Battery storage costs are also declining. Combined, that is resulting
in a huge decline in the cost of accessing solar power. The sun is coming down, but in a good way. And when I talk to the CEOs
of these companies, they smile and say,

“Neeraj, we are far from done.” "Far from done" is really encouraging because if these trends play out, solar power could muscle
aside fossil fuels as a source of energy. By 2030, Asia will have twice the amount
of solar deployment as the West.

And thanks to Asian innovation, large parts of the world could have
low-cost renewable power whenever they like. And a new panda may enter our lexicon. The solar panda. (Laughter) Asia's second intellectual contribution
has to do with solutions

rooted in collective good. Young Asians maintain close ties
with their families throughout their lives. For them, the group
is as important as they are. The same ethos permeates in businesses, so family-run enterprises
and state enterprises dominate.

Today, when many Western companies
talk about social purpose and multi-stakeholder orientation, remember, Asia embodies that. Actually, Asia pioneered that. The region also continues to raise the bar
on social consciousness. A good example is Ibasho centers,

which encourage the elderly
to stay involved in their communities. Originating in Japan, these centers
are now traveling across Asia. An Asian CEO I know well put it this way: "If I had to put a person
on Mars in five years,

I'd look to the West. To make sure the same person
survives on Mars, I'd look to the East." Which brings me to the third intellectual
contribution that Asians are making, which is driven by their own
unique challenges and what I call

a “leapfrog mindset.” Take health care. Asia is 60 percent
of the world's population and more than half of the burden
of diseases like diabetes, cancer. Asian countries, shown in green dots here, cannot replicate the path
taken by the Western nations,

as that path is prohibitively expensive and is not always guaranteed
to get you the best outcomes. So instead of the red arrow path, they need to leapfrog and take
an alternative white arrow path. Health care that is less costly and gets you to a better outcome

and accomplishes more. Digital technology today
offers exciting possibilities. Interoperable health records
are one way of addressing this challenge, because they allow continuity of care
from a small doctor's clinic to a big hospital. Many countries have struggled
to implement this,

but India in this case
has taken a big leap forward and digitized 400 million health records. Of course, a lot more needs to be done. The Asian private sector is getting
into the mix as well. My daughter who's sitting here
recently interned at a start-up

which does low-cost portable diagnostics for diseases like diabetes
and respiratory infections. In Asian healthcare, I feel the same kind of energy that propelled fintech
to where it is today. And I find that extremely promising. Asia's intellectual contributions
can be summed up,

in my mind, as a new kind of URL. We have unit economics
rooted in collective good and a leapfrog mindset. As you may have guessed,
consultants love acronyms too. (Laughter) So what does Asia's rising cultural
and intellectual influence mean

for the world? In the short term,
it may mean some disruption, but in the long term, it will mean
progress for everyone. As Asian culture moves westward, and as Asian ideas
and business innovation take root, our lives will be more diverse,

more interesting, and frankly, more fun. Our societies will be more resilient. As we deal with climate change or potentially a next pandemic, we will have two different paradigms
to work with and not just one. So let's embrace Asia's
new place in the world.

Let's celebrate our interdependence
and the richness it brings us. Let's look to Asia as a place
for learning, growth, progress, and excitement. Let's enjoy our Taylor Swift
and our Diljit Dosanjh, too. Thank you.

K-Pop, Cutting-Edge Tech and Other Ways Asia Is Shaping the World | Neeraj Aggarwal | TED

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K-Pop, Cutting-Edge Tech and Other Ways Asia Is Shaping the World | Neeraj Aggarwal | TED

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