Global CEOs of Nokia and Ericsson see India taking lead over the rest of the world in the digital infrastructure with the fastest 5G rollout, making it a bright spot for future economic growth. While speaking at the CII Partnership Summit, Nokia Corporation President and CEO Pekka Lundmark said that India will be one of the key winners based on the developments happening around the world.
"What I believe is really impressive is the way India has been systematically building the digital ecosystem. Now the most ambitious and the fastest by a big margin 5G rollout in the world, these are our building blocks for the future economic growth in any country and India is really taking a lead in this respect," Lundmark said.
He said that India is now the second biggest market for Nokia and the company is exporting 5G base stations from here to other parts of the world. "The next big thing in India will be industrial digitalization, manufacturing industry 4.0 and the opportunity to use this platform that you've been building to attract more and more manufacturing, and also very importantly R&D to the country," Lundmark said.
Ericsson, President and CEO, Borje Ekholm said 4G helped build digital companies in the US and China like Facebook, Tencent etc and with rapid 5G rollout India will have the most modern digital infrastructure.
"We saw all the big consumer applications developing over the last few years. We have seen them develop in the two countries that built out the first 4G networks in the world. That happened to be the United States and it happened to be China. Almost all jobs in the consumer sector or digitalized in the consumer were created there.
"With 5G, we're going to digitize society and those jobs will be created in the country where the digital infrastructure is built first. With the pace India is building out 5G, it will have the most modern digital infrastructure in the world," Ekholm said.
Both Ericsson and Nokia pitched for the world to follow a global standard to keep the cost of technology lower otherwise it will hurt economies of scale, digital inclusion of rural masses and global economy.
General Atlantic (India), Managing Director, Sandeep Naik said that India is a top-growing economy and foreign direct investment worth $100 billion is estimated to flow in India over the next 10 years.
"In terms of private capital entering India, we did around $40 billion in 2021, I see that easily going over $100 billion in the next five years. I think that is a conservative number in terms of private capital coming into the country. As General Atlantic, we will have a fair share of that market," Naik said.
Nestle India, Chairman and Managing Director, Suresh Narayanan said that the spectre of inflation, especially food inflation is still there.
"We cannot wish it away and we cannot assume that it is not going to be haunting us for a while. This clearly has implications in terms of price values, cost, incomes, expenditures and all of that. The fact that we are a consumption driven economy, gives us a lot of hedge in terms of some of the global volatilities that we have.
"I think an important issue for us is to use the opportunity to digitally transform our businesses across the value chain," Narayanan said.