India is a land of billion opportunities: Mukesh Ambani

Mumbai: Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries and India’s richest man, said the single-biggest driving force behind India’s growth is its favourable demographics, which, in turn, is creating the largest entrepreneurial pool in the world.

“People think India is a land of billion problems. But India is a land of billion opportunities. India is ready to take off,” he said at a session on “India in the new global reality” at the World Economic Forum (WEF) India Summit in Mumbai.

“Entrepreneurship, the factor behind India’s growth, is huge here,” he said. “We are the youngest country in the world and we are now setting up a platform where we can give higher quality of living to all.”

He said over the years, the biggest changes affecting Indian businesses were their increasing ability to innovate, a growing awareness that wealth created had to be shared with society and not just shareholders, and changing leadership patterns in favour of younger leaders.

“We used to think that responsible jobs could be done only by 60-year-olds. Now, people are ready trust the abilities of even a 40-year-old,” he noted.

Even the government and its role in the economy have undergone drastic changes, he said. Earlier, the government had the responsibility of pushing the economy forward. Now, its role has evolved into that of a facilitator, Ambani said.

He also thought India needed a faster pace of governance to match its economic growth. The RIL chairman believed there was mismatch between the pace at which Indian companies and citizens want gratification and the pace at which policy changes are being made. Rules, therefore, need to be redefined, he said.

Ambani also noted that over the years, the relation between Indian corporates and the government had evolved from confrontation to partnership. “Nobody can do anything alone. We have to partner each other to deliver value to citizens. As we move away from 20th-century institution models to the 21st-century model of delivery, governance must change drastically,” he added.

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