At the ET Alpha Wealth Summit, held in Mumbai last week, leading fund managers, Vikas Khemani, Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Carnelian Asset Management & Advisors , Saurabh Mukherjea, Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Marcellus, Hiren Ved, Director & CIO, Alchemy Capital Management and Kailash Kulkarni, CEO, HSBC Mutual Fund, held a discussion on ‘India, Amritkaal or AI-Kaal? India’s Next Decade’. Here we focus on what Khemani had to say. Kshitij Anand, Editor-Markets & Finance, ET Digital, moderated the panel discussion
The foundation has already been built
Vikas Khemani, Founder and CIO of Carnelian Asset Management, opened with a striking observation. India has spent the last decade quietly laying the groundwork that most economies take generations to establish, digital infrastructure, physical connectivity through roads, railways, ports and airports, and landmark regulatory reforms including GST, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and RERA.
“India has built a very nice foundation,” Khemani told the panel. The results speak for themselves: Indian corporate earnings have compounded at a CAGR of 14–15% over the last 20–25 years, a track record few major economies can match.
Demographics: The dividend nobody else has Perhaps India’s most powerful and irreplaceable advantage is its people. Two-thirds of India’s population is of working age, making it the youngest major economy in the world at a time when China is ageing and most developed markets face shrinking labour pools.
More earners means more consumers. More consumers means GDP growth. It is, as Khemani put it, almost arithmetic.
Why India is different from every other emerging market One of the panel’s sharpest insights was the contrast between India and its emerging market peers. China was built on exports. Brazil runs on commodities. Taiwan and South Korea are hostage to the semiconductor cycle.
India, by contrast, is structurally diversified, across BFSI, manufacturing, consumer, services, and infrastructure. That breadth is not a weakness. It is a buffer, and increasingly, a source of compounding strength.
5 sectors set to create wealth over the next decade Khemani outlined five b
Read More