Corporate leaders in India spoke about the country’s economic growth and potential in the coming years at TIME’s The Partnership Imperative: Building the Next Chapter of Growth dinner in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday.
Speaking on the panel were Madhur Jain, co- founder and CEO of Varaha ClimateAg, a climate tech start-up; Anupriya Acharya, CEO in South Asia of Publicis Groupe, an international marketing and public relations firm; Rajesh Mittal, president of the automotive company Isuzu Motors India; and Mio Oka, the director of India operations at Asian Development Bank.
Acharya spoke about the importance of flexibility when creating business opportunities across India’s vast network of markets and regions.
“Flexibility starts from a point where you are not treating everything the same, and it’s not like you can do copy-paste on the same solution from one market to the other,” she said. “It doesn’t work like that.” In order to tend to the needs of multiple businesses, she said, “you have to solve for each of the sectors, each of the clients, each of the segments … starting from their own context.”
Acharya also discussed the ways in which AI can provide quantitative insights into the economy and how to leverage that data.
“The amount of data that is available is absolutely mind-blowing and mind-boggling,” she said, while stressing that for a business to thrive, it needs a qualitative understanding of the country as well as data-driven insights. “You need the qualitative aspects, the understanding of culture, understanding of India, the understanding of consumers, markets to decode … how you could plan for the future.”
Oka talked about the ways in which India can continue to improve in some key business areas.
“So, what’s missing in India? Two things. One is manufacturing lead growth. Second is technology,” she said. She added that the agriculture business is another key component to India’s economy that should increasingly be invested in.
She also said that there must be “real dialogue” between the government and companies to address systemic issues in the country.
“We know there are issues about labor. We know there are issues about land. So why don’t we talk about it?” she asked. “It’s a good time that we start tackling the fundamental problems that we have, and this is why the transparent, honest dialog based on trust, is very important.”
Jain also discussed the importance of India’s agriculture industry.
“India has 162 million hectares of crop land area. India always had incredible talent, which is now matched with a lot of ambition and capital as well,” he said. “It’s important that there is an eye upon these upcoming areas which can fetch billions of dollars and bring them into the country.”
Mittal said that India’s export economy should become the country’s focus, if it wants to see continued growth in the years to come.
“We have to become export oriented, and that can come only when we start thinking on building trust through quality, through discipline, through systems, through processes,” he said. “We have a lot of manpower, so we have a lot of potential to become a manufacturing hub.”
The Partnership Imperative: Building the Next Chapter of Growth was presented by Andhra Pradesh.
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