Sunil Mittal Backs India's Manufacturing Push — 'Finally Getting It Right'

India is finally getting its manufacturing policy right according to Sunil Mittal, Chairperson of Bharti Enterprises Ltd. With a projection of one billion people in the working-age demographic by 2030, Mittal pointed out the immense opportunities this presents for the country. 

“There’s a tremendous amount of consumption and equal amount of savings,” he said, indicating a shift in economic dynamics that could benefit various newer sectors such as tourism and e-commerce.

The digital sector is expected to generate huge job and development opportunities, he said, estimating a need for a million professionals in the digital realm over the next five years.

However, this is still just a fraction of the population and in order to become a true economic power, the country needs to up its manufacturing game even further, Mittal added.

Initiatives like the Production-Linked Incentive are a "huge boost" that will catalyse manufacturing processes, he said. The industry is well-aware that consumption is going to rise and in the next few years and India will start exporting mobile phones that are entirely produced locally. Not just assembled in the country but "manufactured from the semiconductor to software to the entire structure of the phone,” he said. 

The industrialist also noted the importance of private capital expenditure in driving this growth. “Consumption in this country is only going to rise,” he said, referring to the decreasing dependency ratios and increasing demand for products and services. 

Sunil Mittal at the NDTV World Summit The Indian government is fostering massive investments in infrastructure, recognising that “for every dollar that goes into infrastructure, it will yield $2.5 to $3 in economic activity", Mittal said.

Electronics, hardware manufacturing and software are some of the strongholds that India has in terms of manufacturing, he said.

Mittal noted his own company’s investments. Bharti Airtel alone spends between Rs 30,000 and 35,000 crores on digital infrastructure, including fibre laying, tower installation, and the development of satellite nodes. “Large industrial houses are investing, and there’s a strong supply-side investment coming through,” he said.