Akshat Jiwan Sharma

10 Apr 2026  At electronica India 2026 I had the chance to connect with original equipment manufacturers in the semiconductor industry. The government of India is pushing hard to build a semiconductor ecosystem in the country and conferences like these give opportunities to manufacturers, researchers and investors to connect with each other and explore avenues for collaboration.  The entire electronics value chain is vast but one area that has been steadily gaining momentum is domestic manufacturing  of PCBs. Not just the raw substrates but also technologies higher up the value chain, by developing or acquiring tools that can copper clad ,do photolithographic circuit patterning followed by placing components on the pcb to actually make a functional device.  This process is not as demanding as the actual manufacturing of the IC using the advanced EUV lithography techniques but it is a good start for building domestic capability. A goal that is certainly ...

  8 Apr 2026 I thank the sustainable leaders development council for organising the 5th edition of green hydrogen India conference and bringing together policymakers, researchers and businesses to talk about one of the most important molecules upon which hinges the future of green transition — hydrogen.  The Hydrogen ecosystem is vast, numerous businesses have occupied a niche in its generation,transmission and distribution. Decades of research have optimised nearly all aspects of these processes yet hydrogen is facing difficulties in its adoption. There are a couple of reasons for this.  One is that fossil fuels are incredibly cheap. To the point that almost all of it is pure profit. You just dig it out of the ground and sell it in the market. This has helped propel entire sectors that have become multi billion dollar industries. Plastics,automobiles,fertiliser and to a large extent even steel. What this means is that even at a relatively cheap price of $5 pe...

27 Mar 2026 I thank the ASM Advanced Materials Manufacturing Technical Committee for organising a very fruitful discussion on additive manufacturing aka 3D printing for complex military components.  It is no secret that armed forces require industrial support to operate. An entire military industrial complex builds tools necessary for the armed forces to function. While this does utilize the labour force  effectively through ‘division of labour’ it naturally creates logistical hurdles and dependencies to localized manufacturing ecosystems.  This is not inherently bad but some autonomy in manufacturing could make the armed forces more robust. Traditional manufacturing techniques leave no room for this. Casting,die forging,smelting need big factories and massive supply of energy to be economically feasible. 3D printing however makes remote manufacturing possible via layer by layer assembly of materials into complex parts. One simple machine can now do the work of an assembl...

I had great fun connecting with representatives from the Tourism Authority of Thailand promoting Thailand as a destination to travellers in India. Nearly 2 million Indian travellers visited Thailand in 2024 making India one of the top outbound markets for Thailand.  Ms Pattaraanong Na Chiangmai , the Deputy Governor for International Marketing (Asia and South Pacific) communicated the decision of the tourism authority of Thailand to position their nation as a ‘premium’ travel destination shifting the focus away from mass tourism that has dominated the Thai travel scene.  With a focus on wellness , destination weddings and cultural activities it seems like TAT might succeed in its goal, especially as Thailand shares deep cultural bonds with India through Buddhism, through the Thai language itself which has flavors of Sanskrit and Pali and of course through the fun festival of Songkran which is very similar to the wildly popular holi celebrations in India. The growin...

23 March 2026  Over the last couple of days I had the pleasure of participating in two very important conferences, 'Path to Deployment for Long Duration Energy Storage’  by LDES council together with the International renewable energy agency and ’the future of hydrogen mobility’ by hydrogen europe.  Both the LDES council and Hydrogen Europe are working very hard to raise awareness among policy makers and investors about the importance of alternative sources of energy storage and their role in decarbonisation of the grid and industries.  For large scale deployment of Long Duration Energy storage technology new investment is critical but investors won't invest in a technology that does not provide a reliable ,safe and guaranteed path for a return.  During the webinar experts at IRENA,LDES and from regional markets in North America,Asia and Europe presented their views on how this chicken and egg problem could be resolved.  The main angle that the council has...

Transmission lines play a critical role in electrical infrastructure. They help actualise the single most important feature of electrical energy. The ability to transport it over large continental scale distances. In recent years there have been concerns about a shortage of copper to meet the demands of transmission lines but there are 2 counter arguments to that.  First the total known reserves of copper are around 1 billion tonnes while the annual production is merely 23M tonnes. For a 1000KM long HVDC link only about 30 thousand tonnes would be required. 20MT of copper would suffice to meet all of 3TW of power required globally with plenty left as a backup for future demand. And that's just copper, there is even more aluminium which is quite close to copper in conductivity and could easily fill in gaps left by the copper supply chain. If all else fails there is always steel. It has 50 times lower conductivity than copper but even then it's good at high voltages. There is an ...