India has made significant advancements in the technological sector, pioneering new ways of doing things in a saturated industry. India has built ambitious platforms for universal identification and digital payments, including the world’s largest biometric database and a system for sending rupees between any bank or smartphone app. Bill Gates took notice of it all these past few years and said people should study the country other than China.

“If people are going to study one country right now, other than China, I’d say they should look at India,” Gates said at the Singapore Fintech Festival on Tuesday. “Things are really exploding there and innovation around that system is phenomenal.”

Bill Gates also discussed other topics like the coronavirus vaccine. He was optimistic about how quickly vaccines were being developed to address the Covid-19 pandemic. He expects there will be about six treatments available in the first quarter of next year, which he called a significant accomplishment.

“Digital things overall — remote learning, telemedicine, digital finance — were greatly advanced,” he said. “So even though the pandemic has been terrible, it has pushed some of these innovations, including how quickly we make vaccines.”

But Gates warned that addressing the virus has to be done in an equitable way — rich countries shouldn’t get to decide who gets access to vaccines. That’s why his foundation is working with global manufacturers, including the Serum Institute in India, to make sure there are sufficient dosage numbers at reasonable prices.

He said he expects vaccines to put an end to the coronavirus in 2022, though he warned against complacency