The next big thing
Anand Mahindra, Amitabh Kant, Adi Godrej, Deepak Parekh, and Vijay Shekhar Sharma spoke about Make in India, ease of doing business, GST, demonetisation and private investments at India Today Conclave 2017.
From captains of industry to start-up founders, candid conversations on the roadmap for a paradigm shift that must occur for India's big leap forward.
Anand Mahindra, Executive Chairman, Mahindra Group
On Make in India
The edge these days is that if any businessman endorses 'Make in India', you are simply being politically correct and you are spineless. Frankly, I am now a little older and a little wiser. I don't like to be cynical about anything. Is it a good idea to promote Make in India? There is no point in mocking that. Has it worked? Yes. I think it's beginning to work. India is probably the best place today to look at as a manufacturing destination. The companies of the future are not going to be monochromatic. They are going to make everywhere. You have to think of future companies building networks of manufacturing and R&D.
Roadblocks on the way
Look at the last two-and-a-half years; you know, in the Global Competitiveness Index, we have risen by about 39 positions. No country has done it in the past two years. Indian business will have to catch up. Right now we need jobs. Go out and catch the imagination of the world. There is no rocket science in trying to understand why and where the investor goes. They want infrastructure, ease of doing business, a skilled population. But at the end of the day, you want a leadership that is committed and will deliver on its promises.
Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog
On ease of doing business
We have just risen one place and we are still 130 out of 190 countries in the latest ease of doing business rankings. This is the first time the government is talking about having scrapped 1,200 laws. This is the first government which is talking about ease of doing business. This requires a huge change of mindset at the bureaucratic level. It started to happen at the top level, but for it to go right to the bottom of the states will take time. We made the states compete on education, health, water, on water management. The challenge is the states compete and get ranked, and they get named and shamed and put out in the public domain.
A date with the future
Radical transformation will take place in India by 2018 when the dedicated freight corridor is completed. Logistics costs are very, very high. If you are producing goods in the northern part of India, Bihar or UP, it takes you 14 days to reach the ports of the western coast. By 2018, you will need only 14 hours. We are the only country today doing all our transactions through the mobile phone. We have converted our mobile to a bank, into a wallet. Look at the kind of energy, vibrancy and dynamism the start-ups bring.
Adi Godrej, Chairman, Godrej Group
GST a magic wand?
The next step that will have the greatest effect on tackling unaccounted-for money in the country will be the introduction of GST. A lot of the black money in India is generated by the evasion of taxes, like excise duty, etc, and that leads to evasion of direct taxes too. Now with GST, the ability to evade indirect taxes will become very difficult and the people used to that business model will have to pay taxes or get out. Private consumption has decelerated. But GST will trigger consumption. We have inherited too many controls from our socialist days. A lot is yet to be done for India to become competitive. I think that will be the major next step for the economy in reducing unaccounted-for money.
On 'tax terrorism'
The objectives (of the government) should be implemented, but not by crackdowns. The system should not allow someone to do anything incorrect. We have had great success in indirect taxes. A lot of tax evasion will go down with the implementation of GST.
Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC Ltd
Demonetisation and after
The entire exercise (of demonetisation) was a pre-planned exercise. When the government came to power, it said it will be without corruption, and talked about ease of doing business, Jan Dhan accounts, direct benefit transfer and tackling black money. The government started with tax pacts with Singapore, Cyprus and Mauritius. Then, they had the black money bill to attract Indians who have black money abroad to come in. And then, there was an income disclosure scheme. Then came demonetisation. The process (of curbing black money by cracking down on benami property) should continue because, you know, it will help India, and the government can raise far more resources, which will help the infrastructure and social sectors like education and healthcare.
Outlook on private investments
I think it's round the corner, which we'll see this year, and you'll see we have lot better days in India to come now because the macro fundamentals are so strong. In 50 years, I have never seen such strong macro fundamentals in India.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma Founder and CEO, PaytmA bank of my own
If the RBI gives its blessings, we should be a bank by the end of this month. We don't need to compete with the big boys, because every large bank in the country has done a tremendous job of making banking available to people who have it all, like you and me. There are about 270 million accounts which, if we add a few more Jan Dhan accounts, will be a big number.
Making money
Money does not matter. Money is not even a milestone, money is not even a means, money is not even an absolute journey ambition. This is the business model where we will make money when the money is used. For example, when you move money from one Paytm account to other, we don't make money. But when you use this money to buy a bus ticket or a cinema ticket, we make 10 per cent higher money than what a bank would have made in a smaller transaction. So if the money is stored, then we make treasury income. If the money is moving, we make money.