 Ladies and Gentlemen, Excellencies, Dear Co-Chairs, Honourable Minister Nirmala Sita-Maran, Honourable Prime Minister Anil Vikram Singh, Ladies and Gentlemen. The Forum's leadership team, Sarita Nayar, Murad Somnis, Olivier Schwab and Evian Monk welcomes you to the 32nd India Economic Summit. And India is always an opportunity and it's always exciting. But this year, India jumped up 16 ranks in our global competitiveness report. But even more important than numbers and figures are always the people. It is the people who brought us here together and who makes the country that exciting. And so we are here today, under the theme, in order to drive forward India's inclusion through digital transformation. And at that point, I would like to start with a welcome message from our Founder and Executive Chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends, a very cordial welcome to the 32nd India Economic Summit. I want first to thank all our friends, and particularly the Confederation of Indian Industry, our partners, for the partnership, for the support, for the World Economic Forum, demonstrated over so many years. I would have liked to come and to join you, but unfortunately, for a personal reason, I cannot be with you. I would have liked to celebrate with you the progress made. I remember when I came first to India, there was a lot of hope and little action. Now finally, the country is on the move. The country is attracting foreign investments. I remember when even the figure of one billion FDIs per year was a distant dream. Now the country, according to our competitiveness report, belongs to the 40 most competitive countries in the world, a progress of 16 places last year alone. I congratulate you. I also know that despite all this progress, despite having strengthened the institutions, despite having attracted foreign investments, despite showing a lot of entrepreneurial forces, there's still a lot to do. We will discuss the challenges of the Indian economy, but not only of the Indian economy, the challenges of South Asia during the next days. Here, two elements come particularly to my mind. The first one is the need for more inclusiveness. We see it everywhere in the world. And for this reason, the choice of the theme of this India Economic Summit is particularly appropriate. Inclusiveness in India, but in the world as such, will be one of the decisive objectives the world community, the Indian society has to achieve. But in addition, we have to master, as we said at the beginning of the year in Davos, we have to master the forced industrial revolution. This revolution will change not only business models, it will change the competitiveness of countries, those countries which are forwards looking, which recognize the opportunities, those countries which develop the necessary skills, which have the appropriate educational systems, will be the countries which succeed in the future. With our India Economic Summit, we want to make a strong contribution to recognize the issues, to recognize the opportunities, but also to work together to eliminate the risks. To thank you again for joining, I look for many other years of cooperation, and I look particularly very much forward to my next visit, which will be soon in India. And ladies and gentlemen, this India Economic Summit could only be possible thanks to an excellent cooperation with our trusted partner, the Confederation of Indian Industry. And therefore, would like to invite the Director General of CII to welcome us on behalf of CII, the Director General Chandragit Banerjee. Excellency the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Mr. Ranil Vikramasinghe, the Honorable Commerce and Industry Minister of the Government of India, Mrs. Nirmala Sitaraman, my colleague and friend Philip, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of CII, welcome to this annual event of the India Economic Summit, something that we have been doing. We started between a partnership between the CII and the World Economic Forum, as you heard, for the last 30, this is the 32nd edition, and when they came into India in 1984. It has been a long partnership and a long friendship, and which is really today, which has, after this long journey, over the last couple of years, we have seen growing collaboration between our two institutions on diverse areas, be it risk, be it inclusion, and so many other important areas that today talk about as India gets this phenomenal global attention that it has got in the last two years. It has been a partnership where we have been working on areas like competitiveness and it was so pleasing to hear that India jumping up so strongly, those 16 points and being, as you heard, amongst the first 40 nations of global competitiveness. So in this journey, ladies and gentlemen, it has been interesting to see how the focus on India across the globe has so well intensified in the last couple of years, and therefore we find it very, very pertinent to focus on some of the important areas that we call the pillars of the summit, and the pillars of the summit, as you know, ladies and gentlemen, what number one is on the fourth industrial revolution, which is, again, very pertinent for India. We are also talking about sustainable and equitable growth, which is, again, a very important pillar of our work together, and as we have worked between our institutions and within India to, again, reflect on this as an important pillar, was an important area to focus on. And third, again, another index where India has fared very strongly, where we have seen a lot of work in the last two years in the central government, in all the states of India, is on ease of doing business, and all of this together make India so very competitive and makes this strong, bright spot that we talk in the global economy today is indeed India. Being the fastest growing emerging economy, we are indeed very pleased to see this collaboration resulting in this type of a qualitative turnout in terms of speakers, in terms of global leaders, in terms of global business who are participating in this conference over the next two days today and tomorrow, and would really like to, on behalf of CII, warmly thank the co-chairs who have played such an important role in shaping this very, very timely conference in India, which once again renews us to think our strategies and the way forward as we go along this very, very important journey. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being here in such strong numbers and we wish you that you have very good deliberations in all the sessions, which have been so well-crafted, and I would like to thank the entire World Economic Forum team, which has been working so sincerely with us in putting this conference together as we go along and we look forward to many more years of partnership to take this very, very important relationship further. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being here. Ladies and gentlemen, as you may know, the World Economic Forum is an international institution for public-private cooperation. Now, after having heard the private sector, it's no more great honor, pleasure to come now to the public sector. And we are here together with the Minister of State for Trade and Commerce in independent charge and would like now to invite the Minister of State here to the stage, Niamala Sita Maran. The Excellency, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Mr. Chandrajeet Banerjee of the CII, distinguished guests. It gives me great pleasure to be here this morning, when your 32nd session of this India Summit of the World Economic Forum is happening. It's a very important event. In fact, the CII and the WEF, the World Economic Forum, have been playing for the last 30 years a very important role in getting industry, business leaders to come and meet, to interact, and to discuss in the context of global economic dynamics as to what kind of issues are going to prevail, what is the direction we're going to be taking, and the exchanged views drove into policy making. As a result, you've had this forum actually becoming a catalytic agent in creating meaningful and purposeful policy which helps the industry. Of course, every now and then it had to be tempered down by the realities of global economic situation as we are now tempered by the not so encouraging global environment. But of course, the 30 years of role that you've played has been very well-recognized, and even today, therefore, irrespective of the fact that the global indicators are not very conducive, I think this meet is going to set the agenda for looking forward to certain directions which we need, and it is not to be forgotten that it is going to be south and southeast Asia, which is going to be the engine of growth, engine of development, engine of all economic dynamics for the forthcoming future. And therefore, this meet acquires a certain significance, and I'm glad that the World Economic Forum and the CIA have focused on some very critical areas which actually matches up with what Government of India is doing under the leadership of the Prime Minister whose single line forward is sabkasad, sabkavikas. And when you're talking about inclusive growth, it's exactly that which we need to focus on, and therefore, there is definitely a synergy between the focus of this meet as much as Government of India's approach to our economic affairs. You're talking about digital world and the digital role of digital activities which will enhance economic development. If your three-pillared attention is going towards mastering the fourth industrial revolution, talking about ease of doing business, or when you're talking about equitable growth, inclusive and equitable growth for a sustained future, all of this sits well with what the Government of India is doing. If you would only take the three examples, which are very current and pertinent to the way in which Government is moving forward, you see that there is complete synergy between the agenda with which you are talking today and what Government of India is doing. You take the example of GST. The GST is going to bring on one platform and have, through the digital enablers, over 800 transactions, both goods and services, on one platform, and symbolically making India not just symbolically, but making India a single market. If this is achieved only through the digital revolution in India, you will get the size and the scale of what we're talking about. The second is the jam, as we call it, the Jandan Yojana, Aadhaar, and the mobile-based changes, the transformational changes that we're bringing in. You're talking about inclusive anyway. Jandan Yojana brought financial inclusion to those who have never had a bank account before. Aadhaar is the way in which we are moving towards direct benefit transfer to those who deserve it. And the mobile connectivity, not just the smart phones, any phone through which you can get basic information about the pension which is getting credited to your account, or about the food ration that reaches your store, or about any little transaction that is happening in that little account that you've opened recently, all that is possible through your mobile. So if these two, the GST, the Jandan, the jam, the Jandan, Aadhaar, and the mobile-based transformation, are both not enough, I will add the third, which is again one of the pillars on which you're going to be talking about, the ease of doing business, on which using technology, opening up newer areas of activity, we are making states come on board with the center to make sure the state and the center together remove all the hurdles to making business do their activity in great comfort. The process is long wound, but certainly it has commenced. The ranking, therefore, between the states has become a healthy competition, similar to the global ranking, which India normally looks forward to. We want to improve our position each year. And therefore, what you're trying to achieve through this meet is exactly what the government of India is doing through the digital revolution that we are trying to bring in, using technology to bring in transparency, remove corruption totally, so that ease of doing business also is facilitated and enabled. Without saying more, I wish the meet all success. I look forward to seeing the outcome of the deliberations of today. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, it's now my honor and pleasure to invite here to the stage the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Honorable Anil Vikram Singh. Honorable Minister, Philip, distinguished guest, and friends. I must thank you for having invited me here today to take part in the World Economic Forum. They told me I have three minutes. Stick to the three minutes. So I put on my politicians watch, but because of three minutes, there will be a big signal. It will go off. The World Economic Forum in Delhi this year is saying the world is expecting India to translate its potential into action, that we are at the threshold of another historic moment. If it is the pace of reform fails to pick up, companies may look elsewhere. Where is elsewhere? It has to be India or China. That's the hard truth. There are no other places to go today. The rules were written by the West globalization. And the empire, we have only played by it. You encourage most of these people. He also went and deposited part of their funds and their assets in the Western countries. No one complained. When their own people started going to Switzerland, they started complaining. Everyone has to take the assets out and take it back home. That's one way. It affects them only. If we came and banked there, all are good. But if we don't get revenue, because our revenue is also going into those tax havens, then it is all bad. I was reading, they were commending India. He's not doing business. But yesterday I read, every factory must put down all their employees there and how many are foreign and how many are not. What happened to India if you do that? Okay, we will bail out. Asia will bail the world out if we are allowed to write the rules. Otherwise we create our own system here. We'll do it, I mean. It'll be a very, very stable system. Not like in America, one day you find the Deutsche Bank 14 billion and next day you say you can go off with four or five billion. So let me say a few words of what we in Sri Lanka want to do together with India and other Asian countries. Recently, the IMF revised downward these figures for global growth. However, South Asia sustained itself at the fastest growing region in India as the engine of growth. China, which is rebalancing its economy is also maintaining an acceptable level of growth. The better performing Asian economies provide Sri Lanka with space to carry out our major reforms. These are macroeconomic stabilization, which is based on fiscal consolidation, increase of tax revenue, which will reduce our budget deficit to 3.5% by 2020 with the primary surplus of 1%. And the stabilization program will be accompanied by measures to restructure the economy, which includes exchange rate flexibility and trade liberalization. To make Sri Lanka a platform for value addition, we are also liberalizing the tariff and the non-tariff barriers that have denied our enterprises the opportunity of getting access to the latest technology and know-how and deprived our consumers of the best quality of goods and services. We are also taking measures to see a rapid improvement of these are doing business by the early part of 2018. Maximizing on these factors will transform Sri Lanka into a geo-economic center of South Asia, dynamically and synergically engaged with the rest of the region. A key thrust is our trade policy. Small domestic markets are insufficient to sustain growth. Therefore, shift to great export orientation is required to achieve a growth of 8%. Hence, our trade policies will focus on gaining access to these markets. The tripartite arrangement. We are cognizant that the economic asymmetry between Sri Lanka and India is going to increase in the future when the latter emerges as a major global player in an increasingly multipolar world. The India-Sri Lanka FDA between the two countries will be further expanded and deepened to go beyond trading goods to cover trading services, investments and technology cooperation. The proposed economic and technology cooperation agreement will be signed by the end of this year. The both ministers who are working in it are present in this room today. And Prime Minister Modi and I decided we must conclude it by end of this year. The EDCA offers a strategic economic advantage to our country and the fastest growing southern Indian states. These five southern states, Kandaka, Andhra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Telangana have a population of 250 million people and a combined GDP of nearly US 450 billion with the addition of Sri Lanka's 22 million and US 80 billion economy. The GDP in the sub-region will be US 500 billion. That is Sweden. This is without getting together. Just imagine if we work together. So that's where your growth will come at. You, I, both of us are from the same region. EDCA has the potential to promote a rapid growth of US 500 billion sub-region economy. And that's where you're coming here to put the infrastructure in, put up the buildings, supply the cement, so many things. We are also negotiating a free trade agreement with Singapore. There's already a comprehensive economic partnership agreement, SIPA, between Singapore and India. Therefore, we believe that by next year, Singapore, India, SIPA, Indolanka, Ektah, and the Sri Lanka, Singapore, FDA, will enable the southern sub-region of South Asia and Singapore to establish a tripartite arranged for trade and investment. It's not only both of us and our southern states and Sri Lanka. We always wonder who has the better crab card, Kerala's. But you bring Singapore in. And then why not, as I've told, speaking to the Prime Minister, why not Indonesia? Why not, why not Malaysia and the other remaining BIMS-Tek countries? So let's have a whole area around the Bay of Bengal, place of economic cooperation and a vibrant market. I mean, that's what we envisage and that's what we should work for. The growth is here. At the end of the day, it's not neoliberalism or free marketerism or anything else that worked. It was that in our area, people just multiplied. We gave the basic services and now they have sufficient income in hand for the takeoff. So let's look at it. One Belt, One Road. A free trade agreement with China and the One Belt, One Road Initiative has been negotiated. This is necessary for us to make a success of the Chinese investments that has come into the Hambanthote Asia hub, which will also be industrialized with industrial parks and the proposed financial city, which is on a renegotiated agreement for the port city. There has been a lot of suspicion as to a military element in it. There are no military element and I can't. We are told that very, very clear to the Chinese. Chinese have agreed, but from my discussion with them, it's going to be their own mode of economic diplomacy pushing all the way to Europe. At a time like this, we might as well utilize the initiative also and this will be a meeting point. Sri Lanka's longstanding economic cooperation in Japan will help us further to modernize the economy. We are now discussing on a much closer agreement with Japan and while they are talking with us, the Japanese are also talking with Delhi and also Singaporeans are talking with Delhi and with us. So you can see while there are all bilateral agreements, there is synergy in these agreements. So here you are getting a big economic area for business. The major people are coming in. The Minister for Development Strategy went into South Korea. I'll be traveling there. That they would also like to join it. So this is where the action is. Don't go anywhere around in the region. And when you are tired, you can come to Sri Lanka for a holiday. We have got some good boutique hotels. And the Japanese are working on a candy mega development project. You can see there are 1.5 million people. The Science and Technology Project. The Singaporeans, Japanese and Indians are working on the Trinko Economic Development Project. We have already made applications to the European Union. We gained the GSP Plus facility for tariff relief. This facility will give Sri Lanka competitive edge in accessing the single European market. So our idea is that we will have access to the Chinese market, Indian market, Singaporean market and the European market in the first round. We will have to negotiate separately with UK, who has taken 40% of our exports to the single market. And we are also planning to negotiate with USA after the presidential election. In preparation for this, we have also set aside about 500 acres for a golf course and a trump building. The key sectors which we are looking at immediately are the manufacturing services, which includes, I don't know if this is appropriate to look at the fourth industrial revolution, digitalized, digital economy. All this gets into it. And we are seriously thinking of robotics. Whereas in Sri Lanka, again in population, it will not be that rapid. It's going to be in other South Asian countries, Indonesia, Myanmar, not in Sri Lanka. We may have to go looking at the aspirations of our people to go in for robotics. Logistics, finance and business, because you want to become a logistics hub. Finance, business, tourism, which is the low-hanging fruit that we are working on. But there are other areas also. And we will be opening it out. In the physical infrastructure, poor physical infrastructure is one of the problems of South Asia. And we want, if we have to exploit our geostrategic position, the government headed by President Maithri Parle, the city center, has decided to build on certain areas to enable Sri Lanka to become the logistics, finance and business hub of the Indian Ocean. And we have already planning out this program of physical infrastructure development to hold the CAR road transportation, energy sector and telecommunications so as to form the backbone of the hub. Let me explain to you the two major development corridors. The Kandy-Kalambo-Hambansa corridor. That way reshape countries' urban landscape with two airports, two seaports. This corridor will amalgamate three, five separate projects. The Kandy-Megad development project, which is the Japanese I have undertaken to plan. The Vyambra, the Northwestern industrial and tourism development project that will take the spillo of industries and tourism in the western area. The US 40 billion western mega-polis project aims to develop the western province as a mega-polis with metropolitan areas on a global scale. The Kalambo port will be modernized with up-to-date infrastructure to accommodate triple E class mega-ships. The Katunaya International Airport will be further expanded. It will include logistics corridor, industrial cluster, science and technology city. The proposed financial city built on 269 hectares from the sea will fill the vacuum for financial service hub along the trading route between the cities of Singapore and Dubai. The financial city will function as a special jurisdiction area with its own economic and commercial laws based on the English law. We will just apply the English law in total to facilitate operations of global multinational corporations and grow as a business and financial hub. Finally, the southern tourist and industrial project and last of all, the US dollar 10 billion Hambanthote area hub economic development project which invites investment to build oil refineries, power generation plants and industrial zones. The second is the Rajaratta corridor on the eastern side. The Sri Lanka government has entered into agreement with Subana Jurong Private Limited to prepare the master plan for Trinkamali based on shipping, manufacturing and tourism. The Trinkamali port is envisaged as a major transshipment port for the Bay of Bengal trade. We are also holding discussions with India and Japan in regard to this project. An area of 176 kilometers to the south of Trinkamali will also be developed as a high-end tourist resort than other areas to the north of Trinkamali too. We haven't left that out. The North Central Province development program with two large reservoirs that have been built, the Moragahakanda Reservoir and Malvatua Reservoir for irrigation for agriculture. Three, rebuilding both the economy and the social life in the northern province. And finally, modernizing agriculture and fisheries in this mainly rural economy of the Rajaratta corridor. To achieve this human capital, the last award, to achieve this ambitious program, Sri Lanka aims to make vast strides in the quality of our human capital, our most invaluable resource. Over the next decade, an example of how talented our people are can be seen in the significant overrepresentation of Sri Lankan managers in specialized ready-made industry government sectors across Bangladesh and parts of India. So our program includes a 13 years of compulsory education. Every child will have to receive a compulsory education, maybe academic, maybe vocational. A promotion of preschools and day care centers. That also means higher participation of women in the labour force. Modern vocational and technical education tied to the job market. See promoting English learning and IT and finally promoting innovation and the establishment of our technology institute for higher education and research. What is our final aim? Our final aim is a very highly competitive social market economy. Not a socialist market economy. It's a market economy with the benefits that are shared equitably by the people. We have already had a program of financial inclusion passed a new law on microcredit and a new program to promote small and medium enterprises. Find the jobs you come from the small and medium enterprises and microcredit. As some of the industries go to automation, this is where the job creation and the income comes. We will aim for a highly inclusive, high inclusion and fair and equal opportunity and broad-based ownership. We are already wasting the lands given to farmers by the government over a million people with a free-hold title. These are bankable documents. Houses which have occupied generations give them the ownership. Our final aim is to create jobs, increase income, expand the middle class and stabilize our rural economy. If you have done that, then our people will be happy. That's the formula that everyone wants to be in. India, China, Korea, Japan or down into Thailand. I think we can deliver and we can make it on our own and we can build our own markets. But then as I said earlier, we must also be allowed to share in writing the rules. Thank you. Thank you, Honourable Prime Minister. And now it's my own pleasure to invite our respected co-chairs as well as our today's session moderator here to us on stage for our opening panel discussion. Please. Good morning, everyone. It's a great pleasure to welcome you to this opening plenary. Just a quick housekeeping announcement. The next sessions will start at 10.30 on schedule. We'll try and wrap this up to give you enough time to get to any other rooms or halls that you may have to go to. I'd like to thank all the co-chairs for being with us in this opening plenary and also to everyone who I'm actually going to get to start off and just tell us what it is that India is actually doing to continue to transform the potential that we've been speaking about into actual action. And yes, there are things in the last couple of years to be quite proud of. The growth rate continues to be buoyant, continues to grow. And now India is the fastest growing economy in the world, well ahead of China. So I'm going to ask each of you if I made all the co-chairs to spend maybe two or three minutes in just outlining for us the progress that you think has been made to transform India's potential into reality and perhaps also give us your one or two ideas of what you think the urgent priority should be going forward. And I think that will shed a lot of light here. I just want to introduce not that most of you need any introduction but I quickly will introduce the entire panel out here. Nirmala Sitaraman of course is the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry in India. John Rice is the Vice Chairman of GE at Hong Kong S.A.R. Anil Agarwal, Executive Chairman with ANTA Resources. Thanks a lot for being with us. Vidya Shekhar Sharma is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of PTM. Amitabh Kant, Chief Executive Officer Nithi Ayog. Johan Orik is the Global Managing Partner and Chairman of the Board at E.T. Kani. And Kita Gopinath is Professor of Economics at Howard University and of course a young global leader. Thank you all for being with us. Nirmala Sitaraman, in fact, you've done that question to you. So, yes, a certain number of positive steps have been taken, GST in particular but I'm sure they are specific items on your agenda for the next five or six months or one year so that India continues to go up the competitiveness ladder. We've broken into the top 40 which is a matter of some pride but I'm sure you won't be content with that. Absolutely not. We need to work harder. We need to take the states on board. I'm happy to say they are working together with us. There is definitely a lot of regulatory mechanisms which go down to the level of the local bodies, the municipalities, the panchayats all of which will have to be eased out and therefore our next four or five months will definitely, as was in the last one year, our attention would be to work together with them, take out all those which are obstructionist and ensure that businesses feel far more assured that the ease is actually coming in in their activity. Also too, I'm happy to say that the FDI flow is really very good but we also have to translate that into meaningful investments and rapidly get them on to translate into job creation, output creation and so on so they can't just be investments coming in but rapidly also move on to the phase where the production takes place, exports happen from them. They're not going to be producing just for India but they're also going to be producing to export from India. So these are things on which we are working. There is a slight gap between India's position in the competitiveness index and the ease of doing business index. In competitiveness, India has top 40 but not in the ease of doing business and that clearly is a direction, along with better infrastructure, that clearly signals the direction in which we need to move as a country. Yes, absolutely. And also you raised the point of infrastructure that affects our competitiveness no doubt but it's also a question of effectively converting all that is produced in India particularly in the rural areas, particularly through tier 3 towns so that better market access is provided the back end facilities will have to be created. So there is a comprehensive agenda of work which is pending, which is ongoing but more to achieve. So there are going to be inter-ministerial work assessment and also ensuring that work moves fast inter-ministerials will also be happening just to ensure that this goal is achieved. Right. John Rice, if I could turn to you next what to your mind is it that India needs to do next? And in particular you could also touch on the theme of infrastructure which is an area I'm sure you've been starting in great length. Well, thank you for that. You know the mission as the minister has described and others is sustainable inclusive growth. There's a lot of things that factor into that you got to create a million jobs a month and you want to keep those jobs so that puts a priority on skill building creating the right skills to do the jobs well. It puts a priority on productivity because you won't keep those jobs if you don't engage in productive activities so productivity has to continue to improve and I would offer a simple suggestion too we're a big proponent and participant in Make India we have been from the beginning we've announced significant investments and Bihar and Pune and we love what we're doing here I think more of an emphasis should be put on exports because the true benchmark for what you're building in any location around the world is your ability to compete on a global scale so if you're not exporting you might not be competitive we're happy that we export 50% of what we manufacture in India but maybe that should be higher and I think just as a side note the country ought to think about an export credit agency there are some 60 countries around the world that support manufacturing exports with active export credit agencies and I think India should be one of those. I'm wondering if I can quickly ask you whether you think that's a good idea or something that you're thinking of Which particular? The export credit part? Well yes, it can always be thought about but there are several aspects to it which will have to be attuned to India I thought I'd try my luck by getting a snap answer to that but yes it's certainly something worth considering Anil Agarwal, India has obviously had a great success in creating global companies not always from within India if you look at the number of global companies that are headed or CEO or chaired by Indians it's actually quite staggering What are the impediments in building out those global companies right here in this country? No, it is a phenomenal time We have, in Vedanta, we have raised last 10 years 30 billion dollars abroad 2 lakh crores and invested all the money most of the money into India and we have found that this regime this government, 1.3 billion people tremendous opportunity, tremendous opportunity I never felt in the last 2 decades this kind of buzz what is happening about India in the world which I have seen and I'm feeling it it's very important that we develop our SMEs SMEs are the need of our, is a startup is SMEs and I'm in the sector of natural resource it's amazing what India import 400 billion dollars worth of natural resources which is oil and gas whether it's talk about gold whether it's talk about copper anything and it's a tremendous availability and being a digital era is a great opportunity to assess what reserves are there and it is assessed to make sure that we can develop these in the most sustainable manner I'll just give you a small example the world-based diamond the Kohinoor has come from India the best marble which is made by Taj Mahal has come from India the Victoria terminus the gold which has been produced the first gold was produced was in India and if you see the oil production one of the first production of oil was produced in Assam so it's very important that we the government has coming out with the policies and to look at the natural resource is a great time so we to eradicate poverty and if you look at the west whether you look at the America, Canada they have all talk about the natural resource and it's a very important time for us to eradicating poverty and most digital manner most the technology is tremendous today you don't have to do as much as what we used to do earlier we can be more accurate so it's a great opportunity, great time for India Right, Vijay Shekhar Sharma fact if you look at the topic specifically it actually says how can India transform the state of its economy and people through digital transformation and digital India is obviously a big theme of the government as well you're clearly one of the people who believe in that and do you think that the digital economy and the start-up economy which you exemplify if I have a better than anyone else whom I can think of is that really the path that India should take the old economy stuff is already well and it's great but if India is really going to transform it by taking leadership in the digital world I fundamentally believe that digital economy offers unparalleled opportunity to India because we've traditionally been building software for the western countries or developed countries and this is for the first time that India itself is consuming significant amount of technology produced which is in form of mobile apps and financial inclusion and retail commerce and sorts of services and I think for the first time what we're seeing is that Indians are very proud for producing for India otherwise we used to have a brain drain most of the time you would get out of an engineering college and the best thing that you should do probably for your career used to be called go USA or go in a other country and work there and that is why we have great number of CEOs and chairmen like we talked about in the world but now it is sort of considered as a level 2 or a level 3 option the first option is always about opening a start-up with the kind of push that Indian government is pushing on start-up in India agenda or working for a technology which is going to serve the Indians I'm very proud that Indian entrepreneurs are not trying to replicate what has been built but accepting that we have to build something for India and something for India that we will build will generate larger dividends for entrepreneurs in this country because we will have a much larger audience left from the western company servicing audience if you see Facebook, Google or all sorts of western countries companies they have more or less served the first billion audience these people who are sort of rich and have an access to a desktop computer their primary technologies have been served on computers which used to have internet connection and for companies like us we know that the consumers so far will have a smart phone so our magic is smart phone and that is where Indians are building it and with the kind of support that start-ups get it is incredible and I'm totally thrilled I've been a start-up person for last 15 years in a way I'll wishfully remain forever in my life and I can say that no other government ever thought of these young companies to be thought about and talked about like we have in this country at this government stage and I wish that all of us Indian entrepreneurs prove to the world that India will not be the third world when it comes to the technology and it will be the first world and lead the way forward for the world to see it from and learn from India I'm sure that that's one of the different ways of going forward and who better to get to elaborate on that than Amitabh Khan one of the people who's been very closely involved with the entire theme of start-up India along with making India of course Amitabh, start-ups in particular India has already become one of the major start-up hubs in the world and that's not necessarily something that should surprise us because Indians are among the most entrepreneurial people they may not be the most organized people but they are certainly the most entrepreneurial of people and of course if you look at start-up hubs elsewhere in the world notably Silicon Valley it's largely been driven by Indians very disproportionate share of Indians there so Vijay was saying that this is really the path unleash the entrepreneurial instincts of the Indian people and allow the start-up wave to take India forward that's something you believe in? No, I greatly believe in it because the only way India can catch up with the rest of the world and grow at rates of 9-10% per annum is if we use technology to leapfrog the challenge for India is really to become the most you know if you have a billion biometrics and if you're going to buy 2024 if you're going to have a billion smartphones you need to become the most disruptionist nation in the world you know the West has always innovated but India needs to innovate for the next 1 billion population of India but also for the 7 billion population and India needs to innovate in urbanization it needs to innovate for sewage it needs to innovate for clean water it doesn't need to innovate for driverless car but it needs to innovate for Indian and the rest of the people and therefore my view is that the process of technology needs to embed our process of urbanization which will be one of the biggest challenges which India will face if by 2050, 700 million people are going to get into the process of urbanization India will have to do very innovative and very sustainable urbanization all on the back of good technology Right, so if you're looking at just to prioritize that so start-ups will happen, urbanization will happen and use disruptive technologies just saying in everything that is happening across the board not just in the start-up era Well start-ups will cut across they'll disrupt the world not merely of digital technology but they'll disrupt health they'll disrupt education they'll disrupt the process of embedding urbanization they'll do a lot of more social innovation across the sector and that's happening actually so Indian start-ups are bringing the kind of energy and vibrancy which has rarely been seen before Right, it's a very good way of looking at it it's sometimes people think start-ups are only in the digital area but actually they do cut across John, if I can just get you in I think it was a year ago perhaps right here the World Economic Forum that you had expressed the views that perception of India was still to change dramatically elsewhere in the world and there was still a certain amount of skepticism elsewhere in the year that's passed since then has that perception changed or is it still there's still a certain amount of skepticism that the India stories often been talked up but sometimes the promise is not always delivered Thank you, Vikram I really think there's in short every reason to be very bullish and optimistic about India the promise I suppose was always there but what has changed over the last years is that particularly the government has become a facilitator and a driver of change and it should be recognized perhaps to the surprise of many skeptics and cynics around the world and I really would like to pay homage to that that really has taken place you mentioned the competitive index jump that was made foreign direct investment was made last year I believe 62 billion was invested by foreign investors in India every year AT Carney my company publishes the FDI index which is a forward-looking index so where investors anticipate to invest money in and there India for the first time jumped into the global top 10 so we very much expect this FDI flow to continue we should also however recognize that there's still and we all know that many challenges remain ahead we are very fortunate to work with the World Economic Forum and many partners on a multi-year project to look at the future of production of manufacturing and obviously make in India comes to mind there the work is still ongoing but what is already becoming clear is that the make in India program which is a very ambitious program to deliver up to 100 million jobs by the year 2022 and already good progress has been made the challenges will however be daunting there you mentioned the fourth industrial revolution all the digital developments well there's a healthy tension between jobs and digital developments and we all are beginning to understand that and we really hope that this conference the next two days will be able to talk about that how we can overcome them how we can make it positive how we can make sure that progress is inclusive and have a very good discussion on that so we're looking forward to about that right, Gita let me get some final thoughts from you before I come back to the panel with actual steps that need to be taken your take on where India is positioned right now India is in a very strong position it's been touted as one of the markets to go to with the source of growth in the world economy so it really has a very good standing the question to look forward and I hope this summit delivers on that is how is it that India can sustain this growth for many decades not over the next five years but you know across political cycles, across elections manages to sustain this because we've had many episodes of countries that have had spurts of growth things look great and promising but then you have a lost decade at the end of it so if you look at countries in Europe if you look at Greece, at one point Greece looked like the destination to go to and it's pretty much undone most of the growth it's had over the last 10 years and so I would really hope and this is the biggest challenge for any country in the world is to have sustainable growth it doesn't have to be dramatic it could just be 8% but 8% growth for a couple of decades would be absolutely fantastic to do that you would require to continue doing these reforms you would have to continuously see improvements the ease of doing business in the competitiveness the social institutions, the political institutions the economic institutions have to keep pace with it and if that's done and if the world notices that this is actually happening in a sustainable way then that will be absolutely mind-blowing for India 8% growth is reasonably dramatic especially if it's carried on over a couple of decades yes but that's exactly what we should be talking about I mean we are in a session called the inflection point I think if there is an inflection point it will be if India can stay at numbers like that for a long period of time and I think before I turn to the audience I think I actually completely agree with you that that is really the challenge to make sure that whatever is happening it's not a spurt because country after country around the world has spurted and then it falls away if you really want transformation with China and some of the others were able to do Korea is have that growth for a prolonged period of time and that's when you really get transformation so then if I can come back to you and maybe I'm going to get all the other co-chairs to also one thought of something that you think should be on the agenda to achieve exactly what Geetha was saying make sure that whatever is happening is for a long period of time it's sustainable and it's not something that's going to go away what would your thought be on that? I would think that is achievable given the commitment with which this government is working and across states we find that urge now that they want to get out of the rigmarole and see brighter days and therefore I think if this sense prevails prevails across states and above all they find now the kind of issues on which we have to come together and get over the difficulties are actually helping politics if only you succeed in removing these obstructions and if you are committed to moving forward on using technology making sure transparent processes are established these are being very well received even by the Amjanta the common people and if that's going to be a vote winning proposition therefore if the people are able to receive it as a good idea and it makes a difference to their lives I can see that the 8% growth argument moving not just with one particular government but with every government which is ruling in the states and also future governments in Delhi so it is achievable now the happy moment is that people have recognized that the factors on which we have to work are actually giving political dividends and that's where I think political parties cannot be different from one another that's an interesting point when good economics becomes good politics that's when you are guaranteed continuity across political cycles which is what she was talking about and just keep on voting us back and that's one other way of doing it obviously that's the other way of doing it quickly if I could just ask you any one suggestion that you think you would make to say whatever is being seen can be made sustainable and do you think it is sustainable in India well I think it is sustainable but you have to think about what's required for the 21st century and a new set of skills I mean we talk about the fourth industrial revolution we think about this convergence between digital and industrial the way you lead in the 21st century is different the way you run a manufacturing facility the way you run a startup you have a different set of skills that's required to win in this century and are we collectively it's a government responsibility it's a company responsibility are we investing in the right training and capacity building to deliver on an economy that we want to grow 8% a year for 20 years alright make sure you are investing in the right things by which I guess you would include skills education, perhaps healthcare in addition to yeah and basic infrastructure you can't do it if you have 200 million people without electricity 8% growth for 20 years is really hard to achieve right make sure that the basics are delivered that's first thing invest in the right things including basic infrastructure what would be one item on your agenda I'm again coming to the same point is the SMEs we consume we manufacture or consume 10% with a similar population 10% of what China does you can see the amount and the scale what will come to India whether you talk about aluminium I'm just taking a small example of aluminium you know aluminium is startup the technology the way it is coming today the automobile car use 600 kilos of aluminium and that's required at least 10 different type of development of components and that's required SMEs to come in and that will bring tremendous job opportunity for India so India is to find India to produce India make in India that's what I believe alright Vijay quickly any one 5 point I'll give a metaphor quickly that and I fundamentally believe that for next 5 years India's opportunity is mobile internet and just remember that when it used to be telecom networks Europeans build it the Nokia's and the Siemens of the world and when it came to the devices that networks were using then more or less North America took it from Blackberry to the Apple and Android and now comes the era of apps and services on top of these networks and this is the space that is meant for India because we have created software for the world we've learned the art and science of how to build world-class software and this is what is our opportunity now with the programs like startup India I do know that there is an attention to it but at the same point of time you should remember that we are talking about Indian consumers so attention to the broadband and I understand that basic infrastructure has been a more requirement but I would not shy away from saying how about putting internet into the basic infrastructure the fourth industrial revolution that we talk about is requirement that there is an internet there and everybody's hand so Roti Kapala Makhan and internet maybe that is how we have to change in the 21st century our expectations from the government not just Roti Kapala Makhan elements there and remember that then startups can create ton of jobs also here and I think the opportunity of creating jobs from SMEs to opportunity to create jobs from building these technologies see the taxi sharing services our Indian company Ola has been able to create jobs and created so many people who were otherwise not having jobs by offering them incentives and coming on the network of ride sharing so elements like these I think technology has an opportunity to create jobs which we need technology enablement as a part of government's core play I have one quick word from you and then I am going to turn to the audience you want to grow at 8% on a sustained basis for three decades you need a radical restructuring of your education and health system you need to bring the same energy into your health and education as we brought into our startup movement without that it will be impossible to grow sustained basis three decades a completely new education system anything you want to add which hasn't been mentioned already I think a lot of people a lot of things have been mentioned already I would like to reiterate the tension that there is between technological progress the fourth industrial revolution and India is already and has to do much more of that there simply is no choice and the creation of jobs and as a democracy that is the obligation of India to do that there is a healthy tension between the two and I really hope that the next two days will shed some light on that all right with automation perhaps jobs becomes an issue if too many jobs are taken away by newer technologies and that becomes indeed and I just want to emphasize something that was raised earlier which is for me the number one priority is skilling and the reason I say that is because the returns to skilling have gone up so much the big source of one of the big sources of increase in inequality in the world is because of the much higher returns to skilling and so India needs to tap into that and unfortunately though we've had skilling programs that have been set up over the last few years the outcomes are not desirable all right I think we are over time a little bit but I'm going to try and get just one or maybe two comments so the gentleman here in the second row here yeah just speak the mic is coming here as we bring efficiency to industry or to agriculture or to our social sector by necessity it will result in job eliminations some jobs are lost when efficiencies come there will be a transition period when we will see jobless growth so which has been the case for a while when India has registered growth but at the same time jobs have not grown and to have to be managed together optimally as we go through restructuring while skilling is an enabler skilling will not create jobs so what should be the strategy of the country that we find jobs for which skilling is an enabler we will need to do that all right let's hope the forum over the next couple of days finds the answer to that particular question last comment and then I have to wrap the session the gentleman there if you can just get him a mic if you can just pass the mic to him right hi I am JD Bansal I am a global shaper from Chandigarh and I am involved in the electrification of the remotest villages of India in the Himalayas villages that don't even have access to basic lighting my question to you ma'am is we are in a way doing the government's work of reaching out to these marginalized communities and setting up DC microgrids how can the government help initiatives like mine we have been frankly working I mean thankful to the World Economic Forum that we have been able to work with corporates to raise funds for the electrification of these villages but how can we work with the government on such initiatives and this is for my peers as well who are working on such initiatives which are essentially doing what the government can supporting the government in the work that they do well first of all congratulations for the work that you are doing and it's a classic example of how private participation together with the government can expedite things but however on electrification and on many other such activities today the government is open minded about co-opting private participation whether it is work participation or capital participation so you are at the best of times for working together with the government so irrespective of the field in your case electricity and extension of electricity to the rural areas far flung areas definitely opportunity exists government is open about working together you should only contact the respective departments you can always work it out for yourself alright see the room thank you so much for that and I'd like to thank all the co-chairs for having been with us as well and let's hope some of the points that were thrown up and some of the questions that still remain we will actually get answers during the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit thank you all so much for having joined us just a quick reminder that the next sessions will start at 10.30 so that's not going to shift so join us at the next session at 10.30 thank you all so much thank you