Investment advisors have been selling the potential of 100 crore Indian consumers to investors across the globe for the past 20 years with excellent success – for the advisor. But, investing in that potential has always led to investor gloom and doom. The potential was always there but somehow India always found a way to overpromise and underdeliver, just like the Indian cricket teams that left with tremendous promise for Australian tours, but those expectations almost always came crashing down like a house of cards.
However, today’s India is writing a new script, in cricket and as an economic powerhouse. The potential of 100 crore wallets that was entangled in the web of black money, oppressive taxation, poor infrastructure and expensive logistics in finally unlocked. Demonetisation, Digital Payments, GST and Tax Compliance reignited the hope that this was finally India’s moment but building out rural consumption points was expensive, and it took years if not decades. Unlike the previous failures, this time the economy and the cricket team had those two pieces that have alluded an Indian victory. Interestingly both of those pieces, whether it is the economy or the cricket team, find their roots in Gujarat.
The ability to battle ahead on the trickiest of pitches, facing the most abrasive oppositions and weathering the relentless media attack requires grit & determination. That role has been perfectly essayed by Cheteshwar Pujara who not only blunted the opposition but took the fight to the opposition while the others built around him. Prime Minister Narendra Modi did the same for the economy. The PM’s economic policies improved throughput of government subsidies to the neediest through the smart utilisation of Aadhar. He filled the government’s empty coffers by increasing tax revenues through higher compliance and bringing in the fear of evasion. He also took the fight to the opposition by calling out their “Accidental Prime Minister” and allowing his team to build better infrastructure, bail out the near bankrupt banking sector and amicably improving or destroying the relationships with our neighbours.
All this gunpower required a spark to explode from someone who would have the planning, intelligence and the pace to bamboozle the opposition. Jasprit Bumrah did that to the Australian batsman, while Mukesh Ambani’s Jio did that to the telecom sector, forcing into submission. Jio’s introductory offers were like Bumrah’s deadly bouncers, Jio’s fast and extensive network like Bumrah’s yorkers and their strategy to hook a user to their content ecosystem was like Bumrah’s slow yorker to Shaun Marsh, it bamboozled them.
The results that India and the world has been waiting for are finally here. The cricket team is 2 wickets away from winning their first Boxing Day match in history. It is a moment that 560 million Indians can watch tomorrow on their Internet-connected devices, a first too. This maturing of India’s potential has driven a record amount of FDI into the country, almost $40 billion flowing in 2018, a whopping $7 billion more than China, a first again, in 2 decades.
The results have taken time and we have endured pain, but the victory is near and will be comprehensive.
103/2018
