UVA Darden Student-Led Conference Considers Potential of Booming India Economy

India’s economy is currently booming, and on track to become the third-largest economy in the world by 2031, according to the Centre for Economic Business Research.

The Darden South Asia Society (DSAS) at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business recently considered some of the many implications of that growth at the inaugural Darden South Asia Conference, which brought together business leaders, entrepreneurs, academics and industry experts from around the globe to discuss just that with the Darden community.

“At Darden, students take pride in the case study method and interactive classroom experience, where we discuss trends and emerging ideas from around the world. We wanted to give a glimpse of this experience to the world,” said Chaitali Pandit (Class of 2022), president of the DSAS. “We saw this as an opportunity to organize a global conference to complement the global MBA program at Darden”

The conference opened with a keynote talk from Narayana Murthy, the legendary founder of the technology giant Infosys. He spoke of the importance that managers play in the health of a company, and in the lives of employees — a notion he wanted to instill in Darden students. They will be future managers working for global countries, he said, and will need to keep employee welfare in the forefront of their minds if they want their teams to be successful.

He also spoke about how globalization is still proceeding, in many cases rebuffing the “strong currents of nationalism.”

“Every nation that has something to contribute to the global betterment can improve the lives of not just her own people but that of people through the globe, the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, the powerful and the weak,” said Murthy.

In 2017, when Murthy came to the Darden School to receive the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Global Innovation, he said he put every decision he made as the leader of Infosys through the filter of: “Will this decision of mine enhance respect for my company from society and will this decision of mine enhance respect for me from my employees?”

The Thomas Jefferson medals are the highest external honors bestowed by UVA.

Women’s Role in Business, Shifted by a Pandemic

In a panel focused on women in business, Shravani Bagchi-Chowdhury (MBA ‘99), customer value and transformation adviser at Google Cloud, spoke about her early career in banking in the late 1990s.

“There were no women’s bathrooms,” she said of her first workplace. For years, she was often the only person with a Southeast Asian background and woman in the room, and felt pressured to blend in.

“You basically had to look like a man but wear a skirt suit,” she said. That changed when she was introduced to another woman in her field who wore “a brilliant magenta suit,” which showed her she was not the only woman on her career path, and that she didn’t need to hide who she was.

While acknowledging that things are better for women around the globe than they were 30 years ago, the panel also spoke about the challenges women face, especially in reaching leadership roles, and how the pandemic has affected women — for better and for worse. Alice Evans, senior lecturer in the social science department at the King’s College in London, and author of the upcoming The Great Gender Divergence, said that COVID has initially set women back, but that “in the long run, there could be a boom for women in the workplace.”

“For a long time, women have been pushing for more flexible remote work [that is] more compatible with childcare,” she said, adding that the pandemic had amplified and normalized that impulse across genders.

Amit Chakarabarty (MBA ’07), a director at the CFA Institute, discussed his experience developing and leading the Young Women in Investment program, which has helped enable careers for roughly 150 young women in its first two years. He discussed the challenges women face in fields such as finance, and how men can serve as allies.

The Rise of Indian Manufacturing, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit

In 2014, the government of India launched “Make it in India,” an initiative to increase manufacturing in the country.

How has it played out? During a panel discussing the efforts, Rishi Jaitly, CEO of Timesbridge, said there is “absolutely a culture in the market now, particular among entrepreneurs” to innovate in India. “It’s so encouraging to see entrepreneurs self-aware of their own agency and their own ability to create and [ask] why can’t the leading digital platform in X category or Y category or Z category be an Indian company?”

Sumit Gupta, chief risk officer for YES Bank, said that India has experienced “a desire for people to get back into manufacturing or start new entrepreneurial ventures,” adding that products like Indian-made electric scooters and cars were “unthinkable” before.

“India has jumped leagues,” said Gupta. “We want to manufacture chips in India,” referring to semi-conductor ships, which are currently in short supply around the globe.

Naresh Kumra (MBA ’99), managing partner at La Rochelle Ventures and a member of the Darden School Foundation Board of Trustees, spoke about how the ubiquity of smartphones and India being a “mobile-first” country has also played a role in the manufacturing and entrepreneurial push. That technology is also empowering lowered  skilled workers to “participate in the new economy.” He cited Uber, which has leveled the playing field for those who previous drove taxis, both through the platform itself but also in assisting workers to buy and insure vehicles. Farmers also have access to more information about current market pricing via text messages.

“Suddenly that information is available to them in their hands in a language they understand. [They can] use that information to do better business,” he said.

Venture Capital and Startups in India

COVID-19 seemed to put much of the world on hold for a period, and while that was initially the case for Indian startups, too, it was only brief — and has sometimes acted more like a slingshot than a hurdle.

That’s especially true in fintech, said Gunjan Shukla (MBA ’09), CFO for emerging markets at OLX group and an angel investor.

“When people were in lockdown, people could not go out and buy goods and exchange services,” he said. “A lot of people moved from offline to online.”

Not only did that increase the use of peer-to-peer payment applications, but it finally pushed merchants to accept something other than hard currency. “COVID forced a lot of them to start accepting additional payments because there was no other way,” he said.

The venture capital world has also caught onto the enormous opportunities in India, said Vikram Gupta, Founder of Ivycap Venture Advisors. India now more than 90 “unicorns” — a private company valued at more than $1 billion — and eight companies have become unicorns already in 2022.

“Our Series A rounds used to be somewhere around $2 [million] to $3 million. These days we are looking at series A rounds at $50 million, $40 million,” he said.

India is also a young and growing nation, so he doesn’t see the country’s potential slowing down anytime soon. “If this market is going to create another 100 unicorns in the next three years, you want to be part of that story,” he said.