When Vinay Rai completed his engineering studies at MIT over three decades ago, he seriously thought of going into teaching. "I was very young then," the 58-year-old business tycoon and author of the recently published book Think India, says with a chuckle. "But I was going to teach people younger than myself."

Rai feels writing the book, along with William L Simon, co-author of The New York Times bestseller iCon, is in a way like offering a course in the Indian economy and entrepreneurial spirit and how it is making the country a superpower.

The book has a second title: The Rise of the World's Next Superpower and What It Means for Every American.

Rai's admiration for the innovative spirit of fellow Indians does not mean he does not recognise the deficiencies of its infrastructure and educational institutions. In an interview with Rediff India Abroad, Rai, who a few years ago was on Forbes magazine's list of 200 richest people in the world, decries the elitism in Indian education.

The half a dozen campuses he has started across the country, he says, acknowledge and encourage the creative process in seemingly ordinary looking students. What his eight-year-old foundation is doing is iconic, he says, urging others to follow its work, especially empowering women, at every level. Each Indian can be another Vinay Rai, he says.

Photograph: Paresh Gandhi

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