Transcript
Akshobh Giridharadas (AG): My guests today are Manjeet Kripalani and Ambassador Neelam Deo, the co-founders of Gateway House. Thank you both for joining us and welcome to The Power of She.
We’ve had very powerful stories on this podcast before, but what’s particularly powerful about both of yours is the story of two women coming together to form a think tank, not just any think tank, but India’s first think tank formed exclusively by women co-founders, one of the first major think tanks outside New Delhi, and one of the very few in the world started by two women. So let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. How did this serendipitous partnership come about?
Manjeet Kripalani (MK): I’ll go first and tell you how Nam (Neelam) and I met. Nam was the Consul General of India in New York, and I was the Edward Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). This was 2006. She was on 64th Street and Madison, I was on 68th Street between Park and Madison. I would pass by the Consulate every day and say to myself, “I really have to meet Neelam.” We tried to connect, but she was always incredibly busy – 2006 was “India Everywhere” year, Davos, India shining, the whole world wanted a piece of India. Finally we met at Columbia University with Jagdish Bhagwati, became friends, and that four-block distance between 68th and 64th Street closed forever. By the end of the year she was one of the few diplomats retiring and moving to Bombay. We thought, “Bombay could really do with a think tank like CFR, why don’t we give it a shot?” And so we did.
Neelam Deo (ND): I don’t know if you remember, Manjeet, we did meet at Columbia with Jagdish Bhagwati, but the second meeting was at a program you were conducting at CFR while you had managed to fracture your leg! The whole program was with your leg bound up on a chair and all of us sitting around listening. I’ll never forget that moment.
That was the perfect segue into the context of the time. Back then the IT boom was in full swing, India’s growth story had begun, Bombay was rising economically, yet geopolitically it felt distant from Delhi. Corporations still largely believed foreign policy was Delhi’s job. Yet you came back to Bombay with a concept paper and targeted companies that had over 40% exports. How did they initially react to the idea of funding a foreign policy-geoeconomics think tank?
MK: We went to 65 companies with large export businesses. Most said, “Nice in America, but it won’t work in India.” Then something dreadful happened that changed everything – the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. I had just returned from sabbatical, was very close to the Taj when the firing began, and spent three days outside reporting. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing—people calling to ask, “Hey, what was that thing you wanted to do? Let’s talk.” No one had heard of Lashkar-e-Taiba; who these Pakistani terrorists were, they were attacking the most international part of our city. It was tragic, but terrorism gave Gateway House its first real boost. Five very forward-looking, progressive companies decided to fund us on the condition that we remain independent, non-partisan, and take no government funding. That’s how we began, literally in a garage. When Nam returned, we squashed four people into a hastily built pod in that garage. Like a proper start-up, we began in a garage and grew from there.
ND: And we have moved on, expanded, and become significant in many ways. Many interns we trained have gone on to staff other think tanks, especially in Delhi. For me, as a newly retired diplomat, it was a completely different experience. In New York, Washington, Copenhagen, I had always been on the other side of the table being questioned by scholars and strategists. Suddenly I was the one answering questions and trying to get Mumbai’s corporate world interested in how the world works, how foreign corporations make investment and trading decisions, and why that should matter to Indian companies expanding globally. Instead of explaining India to the world, I was explaining the world to Indian corporations. The beginning was incredibly exciting.
You mentioned your famous Friday breakfasts at the Consulate in New York for investors interested in India. How have you seen the appetite for India change from little nibbles to the ravenous hunger we see today?
When I was in New York, the U.S. was in an expansive, almost new Gilded Age phase, lots of money sloshing around, everyone looking for the next big destination. India had just undertaken financial reforms in the late 1990s; our economy was opening, talent was being discovered, the financial sector and the instinctive sense of trade and finance that Mumbai has always had were finally getting noticed. American corporations and big banks were looking for good returns, and we were pushing against an open door.
MK: Mumbai has always been India’s financial capital, India’s New York—but it felt disconnected from foreign policy. Business houses thought, “Business is Bombay, government is Delhi.” Setting up a think tank here felt very start-up-ish because we were pushing boundaries at a time when corporations believed they didn’t need to know foreign policy.
ND: In our meetings with Mumbai corporates, their knowledge of foreign policy especially the American economy was actually impressive. What they needed was an institution to help them make the broader connections: moving beyond narrow company interests to policy recommendations that took bilateral and multilateral realities into account—WTO, labour mobility, trained professionals, entrepreneurs. In one word: geoeconomics.
AG: You established Gateway House in 2009. Much has changed, yet India still has a volatile neighbourhood. We’re recording this shortly after the Pahalgam attacks and Operation Sindoor, history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. How has your neighbourhood focus evolved?
MK: This year and last, Gateway House has focused intensely on the neighbourhood. Neelam, as former Joint Secretary, always insisted we keep a close tab and she was right. Through her diplomatic contacts and our think-tank networks, we’ve built strong ties across the region. We study not just India’s relations but internal dynamics and urgings within those countries. We saw the shift away from China early, started studying supply-chain diversification, and realised India had never been part of global trade regimes the way others were. When the India–Australia ECTA was signed in 2022 on terms where Australia asked, “What can you give us?” rather than dictating it transformed India’s confidence. Yesterday we finally signed the long-awaited UK FTA. India cannot become “China Plus One” without a supportive regional ecosystem Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and BIMSTEC rather than a moribund SAARC. Trade always brings peace, so that remains our endeavour.
ND: One of the first papers we commissioned was “How our neighbours look at us.” We asked analysts from the Maldives, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal each neighbour to write frankly about their perceptions of India. We know how we see them; we need to know how they see us. That led to something completely new for Indian think tanks, especially in Mumbai: Track II dialogues. We’ve just concluded the second India–Indonesia Track II. The concept of “neighbourhood” extends from immediate to broader neighbours. Even in 2009 we picked up green shoots of reservation in Bangladeshi and Maldivian perceptions and have worked quietly with them ever since through seminars, energy dialogues (energy binds South Asia even during political difficulties), and constant interaction.
AG: Think tanks were very much a 20th-century, Global North phenomenon. Do you see their rise in India and Gateway House in particular running parallel to India’s growing global stature and the need for Indian discourse?
MK: When we started, people would say, “We don’t need people to think—we need people to do!” We actually made a short film explaining what a think tank was—not a military tank, not a fish tank! In Mumbai they mocked us “two ladies from Bombay want to start a think tank? Go to Delhi.” Even Delhi think tanks initially dismissed us, then slowly started asking, “Hey Nam, how’s your thing doing?” A year later: “Hey Nam, how’s your very successful thing doing?”
ND: We’re delighted when we meet young people we trained who are now in think tanks across India and abroad. Creating analytical capacity, giving context to ideas—that applies to universities, corporations, everything. Globalisation is a natural process that has gone on for thousands of years; we just want that broader understanding to be mainstream.
At a time when the global ideas industry is under strain and consulting firms are blurring lines, what’s the outlook for genuine think tanks?
MK: Tax laws in India just changed, no more incentives for donating to not-for-profits under the old regime. In the West many think tanks have raised so much money they’re barely non-profit anymore; consulting firms are doing public policy, think tanks are doing consulting, and companies can’t tell the difference. In India the big consulting firms, mostly Western have desks inside ministries and companies. There’s growing pushback because of cost, opacity, and data leakage. Meanwhile social media floods us with information and misinformation. Our job is filtering, verifying, finding reality that has never been more relevant. We just have to stay the course with integrity until the confusion settles.
AG: Ambassador Deo, you had a distinguished career across Europe, Africa, Washington, New York. You’ve seen Indian foreign policy evolve from a time when officers didn’t actively promote corporate interests to today’s deep synergy. How do you read that journey?
ND: When I joined the Indian Foreign Services (IFS), we were quite “pakka”, we had corporate friends but didn’t actively push their interests abroad. Economic reforms in the late’ 90s changed both sides. Today the Ministry of External Affairs aggressively promotes India’s economic and commercial interests in a much wider, longer-term horizon. Look at our Gulf relations built initially on spontaneous labour migration, now elevated to strategic partnerships by corporations and government working together. There are now many technocrats—engineers, doctors in the foreign service; that makes a big difference.
And the U.S.-India story, from aid to trade, estrangement to civil-nuclear deal to major defence and technology partnership, all while India refuses treaty-alliance status must be one of the most profound bilateral transformations anywhere.
ND: Absolutely. In the early Washington days we needed weeks of phone calls to get a meeting with a congressional foreign-policy aide. Now a dozen congressmen drop by the Indian Embassy’s National Day reception uninvited. Corporate conversations have moved from convincing them India is a stable democracy to granular discussions: “Which state is best for solar? Where should we invest in climate-tech?” The world has changed, America has changed, India has changed and the relationship has moved from shared democratic values in the abstract to valuing what democracy actually delivers in business and stability.
AG: In an era of AI and automation, where do think tanks fit, and how must they innovate?
MK: Think tanks are only just waking up to AI. In India the demand for AI talent is so high that the best minds are in executive or start-up roles, not thinking roles yet. We’re already seeing AI’s impact in defence (Ukraine, Gaza). The biggest worry is that truth becomes a casualty. For think tanks, integrity of scholarship is our North Star. AI can come and go, but without integrity we have nothing.
ND: Here in the U.S. universities are anxious that in five years higher education will be unrecognisable. When we started Gateway House we brought fresh ideas from early champions of the Quad, of the politics of the poles, of the National Development Bank within BRICS. We want to be equally early and quick in understanding what AI will do to industry, services, governance, and every aspect of our lives.
AG: One of the themes of this podcast is women shattering barriers. As two female co-founders you also had to fundraise in what remains an old-boys-club ecosystem. How did you navigate that?
ND: It was hard. We were a novelty, two women starting a new kind of institution in Mumbai. Getting meetings wasn’t difficult because Manjeet was an extremely respected business journalist who knew everyone of consequence. Turning those meetings into financial commitments was the challenge. But the respect she commanded in corporate, financial, and legal circles really helped. I had an easier time because she was so good.
AG: Finally, what does the vision for Gateway House look like over the next 5-10 years?
ND: We want to understand quickly and deeply what artificial intelligence is going to do to the world, to geopolitics, to industry, to every sphere. Just as we brought new ideas when we started, we want to be ahead of this curve too.
Manjeet Kripalani is Executive Director, Gateway House.
Amb. Neelam Deo is co-founder, Gateway House and former ambassador to Ivory Coast with concurrent accreditation to Niger, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
This recording first appeared on the USISPF’s ‘The Power of She’ podcast.
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