Tech-à-Tête

Secretariat of the EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue
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Tech-à-Tête is a podcast by the Secretariat of the EU–India Digital Policy Dialogue that takes listeners through the conversations shaping Europe and India’s shared digital future. Anchored in the EU–India Trade and Technology Council, Working Group 1, the podcast brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from industry to unpack the technologies driving the partnership. Through these conversations we explore digital cooperation in the two economies and the factors shaping the cooperation: laws and regulation, standards, geopolitics, market and investment incentives, and how digital systems are built and scaled. Whether you work in digital policy or are simply living through digital change, Tech-à-Tête is your space to pause and reflect. Join us each month as we explore how digital cooperation between the EU and India can move from dialogue to action, and from ideas to impact. The EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue is co-financed by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation.

Episodes

  1. 6d ago

    Building Sustainable Data Centres in India and Europe

    The AI race and an increased need for cloud services have led to a global explosion of computing demand. This, in turn, has fueled a data centre boom across the world, which has not left India and the EU indifferent. In this episode of Tech- à-Tête, host Raul Arning discusses this boom with two renowned experts in the field, former Indian civil servant Sharmila Chavaly, and Mark Acton, Executive Director of The Data Centre Alliance.   This episode assesses strategies to expand domestic computing infrastructure in both Europe and India and attract investments for this task. The EU has launched the “AI Continent Plan”, setting up 19 AI factories, including 5+ gigafactories. India has witnessed a major surge in investment over the past couple of years, where government subsidies have offered incentives for hyperscalers.   But this boom is highly contentious. Energy demand for data centres globally is projected to triple between 2024 and 2035. The electricity grids have been pushed to their limits in many places. Together, we discuss how sustainability in data centres looks like, why “Green Data Centre” is a misleading term, and the role of transparency in establishing standards.    Governments take on a key role in shaping data centre development. The conversation proposes measures and incentives to enforce performance and sustainability guidelines. Likewise, building domestic computing capacity may increase digital sovereignty in some regards, yet it demands entering new dependencies – in chips, clean technologies and energy infrastructure. We discuss these multilayered dependencies and what the trade-offs are.   Join us for a half an hour of meaningful discussion, surprising insights and plenty of expertise.   Get in Touch! Website | LinkedIn

  2. Sep 30

    EU and Indian Approaches to Governing Sovereign AI

    Sovereignty is quickly becoming the defining word in AI policy, but what does it mean when a country exercises export controls on AI models? This episode of Tech-à-Tête sits with that question, using a recent event to discuss capability, control and independence in the AI age. It builds on a Working Breakfast Roundtable held on the margins of the AI Impact Summit 2026, and you can find the Non Paper we developed as an outcome linked here. Joined by Ms. Payal Malik, public policy economist and Visiting Professor at ICRIER, where she leads the Digital Economy, Startups and Innovations team, and Prof. Dr. Martin Ebers, Professor of IT Law at the University of Tartu and President of the Robotics and AI Law Society, to unpack the EU-India's approaches to AI governance. The discussion traces the EU's own path to digital sovereignty, from the Draghi competitiveness report to the EU Tech Sovereignty Package. From asking whether the AI Act's extraterritorial reach will produce a "Brussels effect" the way the GDPR once did, to India's techno-legal, deploy-first approach and weighing the risks and advantages of sequencing regulation after, rather than before, deployment. A key theme running through the episode is whether competition law can keep pace with AI at all. Drawing on lessons from the EU's DMA and DSA and India's own market studies on digital competition, the conversation examines concentration risk in compute, data and models — and whether existing enforcement tools are equipped to address it. If you would like to learn more about the EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue and our work on digital cooperation, we warmly invite you to contact us via the email address provided below. Get in Touch! Website | LinkedIn

  3. Sep 1

    EU–India Semiconductor Cooperation: From Diplomacy to Delivery

    In this episode of Tech-à-Tête, host Akriti Bopanna dives into how the EU and India can turn their semiconductor ambitions into real-world action. She’s joined by Naveen Bishnoi, Chairman of the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association and VP & India Country Manager at Marvel India. As well as Mathieu Duchâtel, Director of International Studies at Institut Montaigne and lead of the CHIPS Diplomacy Support Initiative.   Together, they unpack why buzzwords like “strategic autonomy” and “self-sufficiency” might be giving way to more practical ideas like 'economic security' and 'trusted interdependence'. And where the EU and India can actually build meaningful partnerships.   Mathieu breaks down how semiconductor diplomacy fits into the EU’s broader economic foreign policy and Naveen shares how India’s approach is evolving, from chasing investments to building a full-fledged ecosystem.   Both guests highlight the strong complementarities between the EU and India and the conversation explores how tools like the EU–India Trade and Technology Council, the ongoing free trade agreement negotiations and India’s association with Horizon Europe can serve as practical channels for enhanced cooperation between the two regions. If you would like to learn more about the EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue and our work on digital cooperation, we warmly invite you to contact us via the email address provided below. Get in Touch!   Website | LinkedIn

  4. Jul 10

    The GCC advantage: Leveraging the Indian Digital Talent landscape for EU Industries

    What happens when Europe’s growing demand for advanced digital talent meets India’s scale, specialisation and expanding innovation capacity?    In the fifth episode of Tech-à-Tête, host Ashvini Pandey explores how Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are evolving beyond cost and delivery centres into strategic engines for capability-building, innovation and long-term EU–India cooperation.    He is joined by Shalini Nataraj, Global Head – Employee Experience at A.P. Moller – Maersk, and Dr Abhilasha Gaur, CEO of the IT & ITES Sector Skill Council, nasscom.  Drawing on enterprise and ecosystem perspectives, the conversation examines how European companies can respond to persistent shortages in AI, data engineering, cybersecurity and software development by building deeper, more strategic partnerships with India’s digital talent ecosystem.    At the heart of the episode is a central question: can India’s GCC ecosystem become a long-term strategic response to Europe’s digital talent challenge?    The discussion looks at how India’s talent pool, industry-led skilling ecosystem and increasingly verifiable digital credentials are helping European employers build confidence in the depth, readiness and diversity of the workforce. It also explores what it takes to move beyond simply relocating work: creating teams that can co-develop solutions, build technologies at speed and connect more closely with European business needs and customers.    Against the backdrop of the EU-India FTA and the European Legal Gateway Office, the episode reflects on how stronger policy frameworks could enable deeper investment, smoother talent mobility and more trusted recognition of digital skills between the two economies.    Ultimately, the conversation asks what the next generation of GCC talent will need to look like: not only technically strong, but also equipped to lead across functions, cultures and markets.    If you would like to learn more about the EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue and our work on digital cooperation, we warmly invite you to contact us via the email address provided below.    Get in Touch!  Website | LinkedIn

  5. Jun 15

    Unlocking the EU-India Digital Partnership through the Global Gateway

    In this episode of Tech-à-Tête, host Akriti Bopanna explores a question central to the next phase of EU-India digital cooperation: how can big political commitments become real investments on the ground? Joined by Stefania Benaglia, Foreign Policy Expert and rapporteur of the 2025 CEPS Task Force Report on the Global Gateway, the conversation unpacks the EU’s Global Gateway strategy and what it means for India’s digital future. From the Blue-Raman subsea cable and high-performance computing to semiconductors, 6G, digital public infrastructure and AI, this episode looks at where EU-India digital cooperation is already taking shape — and where ambition still needs to translate into delivery. The discussion also examines the relationship between the EU-India Trade and Technology Council and the Global Gateway: one provides the political direction, the other can help mobilise the capital, partnerships and projects needed to make it real. A key theme running through the episode is the role of the private sector. If the EU and India want to build resilient digital infrastructure, diversify technology partnerships and move beyond dialogue, businesses, SMEs, startups and civil society actors cannot remain on the sidelines. As the EU and India look towards 2030, this conversation asks what it will take to turn digital cooperation from a policy promise into a strategic partnership with tangible outcomes. If you would like to learn more about the EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue and our work on digital cooperation, we warmly invite you to contact us via the email address provided below. Get in Touch! Website | LinkedIn

  6. Apr 29

    Trusting Across Borders: Digital Identity Interoperability Between the EU and India

    In this episode of Tech-à-Tête, host Tanea Bandyopadhyay explores one of the most important questions in the future of digital public infrastructure: can digital identity systems work across borders? Joined by Tanusree Deb Barma, Deputy Director General, Technology Division, at the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and Steve Pannifer, Senior Vice President at FIME, the conversation takes a closer look at the possibilities and challenges of interoperability between India’s Aadhaar ecosystem and the European Digital Identity Wallet. From verifiable credentials and trust frameworks to data protection, levels of assurance, and real-world use cases in education, tourism, financial services, and business, this episode unpacks what it will take to make digital identity portable, secure, and useful across jurisdictions. As the EU and India deepen their digital cooperation, the discussion highlights how interoperable identity systems could support smoother mobility, stronger trust, and more efficient cross-border exchange for individuals, institutions, and businesses alike. The EU–India Digital Policy Dialogue’s digital identity interoperability study is currently ongoing. If you would like to learn more or engage with this work, we warmly invite you to contact us via the email address provided below. Get in Touch! Email | LinkedIn | Website

  7. Apr 8

    The Infrastructure Behind Trustworthy AI: What the EU and India Are Building

    In Episode 2 of Tech-à-Tête, hosted by Tanea Bandyopadhyay, we move beyond policy frameworks to ask a more fundamental question: what does it actually take to build AI that is safe, sovereign, and scalable? Titled “The Infrastructure Behind Trustworthy AI: What the EU and India Are Building,” this episode features Aalekh Sharan, Head Agentic AI and Head Public Sector at Sarvam AI and a key contributor to India’s National AI Strategy. Drawing on his experience across both policymaking and real-world deployment, Aalekh unpacks what “trustworthy AI infrastructure” truly means in practice.   The conversation takes listeners inside India’s evolving AI ecosystem; from building full-stack, multilingual models trained on domestic infrastructure to the realities of working with limited compute, talent constraints, and rapidly scaling demand.   Along the way, we tackle some of the biggest questions shaping global AI today: What separates having infrastructure from actually using it well?Can open, sovereign AI models create a more trusted and equitable ecosystem?And where do India and the EU’s approaches to AI infrastructure complement each other, particularly in areas like multilingual and inclusive AI? From DPI-inspired thinking to the economics of compute and the geopolitics of AI, this episode offers a grounded, practitioner-led perspective on what it really takes to build trustworthy AI.

  8. 12/29/2025

    Talking Tech Diplomacy: Europe, India, and the Shared Digital Future

    In this inaugural episode of Tech-à-Tête, we sit down with Amaia Sánchez, Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Asia Programme at Institut Montaigne, and Shyam Krishnakumar, Co-Founder of The Pranava Institute, to unpack what tech diplomacy really means for the EU–India partnership at a pivotal moment. With the EU–India Summit scheduled for January 2026, join us as we reflect on where cooperation stands today and what needs to happen next. The discussion dives into key questions: Where do the EU’s values-driven approach and India’s interests-led strategy collide — and where do they align?How can standards-setting and scale come together to shape global rules?And what pathways exist for moving from dialogue to real-world collaboration, in both the short term and beyond?  If you would like to be part of the conversation beyond the airwaves, follow us on LinkedIn. Please also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, for fresh insights to be delivered straight to your inbox.

  • 8 Episodes

About

Tech-à-Tête is a podcast by the Secretariat of the EU–India Digital Policy Dialogue that takes listeners through the conversations shaping Europe and India’s shared digital future. Anchored in the EU–India Trade and Technology Council, Working Group 1, the podcast brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from industry to unpack the technologies driving the partnership. Through these conversations we explore digital cooperation in the two economies and the factors shaping the cooperation: laws and regulation, standards, geopolitics, market and investment incentives, and how digital systems are built and scaled. Whether you work in digital policy or are simply living through digital change, Tech-à-Tête is your space to pause and reflect. Join us each month as we explore how digital cooperation between the EU and India can move from dialogue to action, and from ideas to impact. The EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue is co-financed by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation.

Information

  • Creator
    Secretariat of the EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Secretariat of the EU-India Digital Policy Dialogue
  • Show Website
    Tech-à-Tête