ET CEO Roundtable: India reshaping globalisation in its own image, opines TIL chairman Satyan Gajwani
In his welcome address, Gajwani acknowledged the uncertainty around business and policymaking.
“We are clearly experiencing a lot of turbulence these days. Even a simple domestic flight in India feels like an act of bravery,” he said with a hint of humour. “But when an economy is growing at 8.2 percent, that’s the equivalent of a few speed bumps.”
Even so, India remains in a positive position, he said.
The forum had convened to “deliberate, discuss and debate India’s gift” after the jury finalized the winners of the ET Corporate Excellence Awards, which it described as “makers and bearers of India’s commercial and economic destiny”. The theme of the evening was Creating the Indian Way in an Uncertain World.
Citing the panellists as an example, Gajwani said the “Indian way” is based on aligning national goals with the changing world order and knowing which levers to use to advantage.
He said Uday Kotak, founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank, “leveraged customer obsession to transform an invoice discounting business into one of India’s most ubiquitous financial services companies over four decades” and added that Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal “built a $100 billion multinational from India in a generation”. Gajwani said JSW Group chairman Sajjan Jindal exemplifies resilience in the face of the “changing matrix”. allies, friends, enemies, tariff wars and real wars,” he said, noting that he “took over two loss-making steel mills in his youth and transformed that business into India’s largest steel producer.”
He also highlighted Hindustan Unilever CEO Priya Nair and Groww CEO Lalit Keshre. Nair joined Unilever in 1995 as an executive trainee and became global head of beauty and wellness before being appointed to lead India. She is the first woman to hold this position in Unilever’s 90th year in the country.
For those wondering whether it is still possible to replicate the same scale that Mittal achieved in building Airtel, Gajwani said one should look to Keshre, who was “born into a farming family in a small village in Madhya Pradesh and went on to build India’s largest stock brokerage platform, becoming a billionaire himself in the process.”
