“India is the engine of the global growth train in the coming days,” he declared, as he traced the country’s extraordinary mix of contradictions and triumphs.
On the one hand, India is often urged to open its markets to global investors. Yet, as Shah pointed out, it already stands as the only major economy where foreigners hold majority stakes in the largest listed companies across sectors ranging from banking and automobiles to telecom, FMCG and asset management. The nation, unlike China, freely allows platforms such as Meta, Google, X and Amazon to operate, reflecting its belief in openness and competition.
The flow of investment also tells a story of promise and perseverance. India attracted $81 billion of FDI in the last financial year – about 5% of global inflows. Yet in 25 years, its net gold imports have surpassed $500 billion, quietly turning it into a “capital exporter” of sorts, as Shah notes, out of proportion to both its consumption appetite and wealth creation.
India’s technological landscape is a study in contrasts, he said. The country still relies on foreign partnerships for advanced jet engines, but homegrown pioneers like Agnikul Cosmos are rewriting the rules—creating the world’s largest single-piece 3D-printed rocket engine. ISRO, on a modest budget, has soft landed on the Moon’s south pole and launched 104 satellites in a single mission – an unparalleled global achievement.
In artificial intelligence, India lacks its own large-scale grassroots model, although its telecom giants Jio and Airtel have opened a global partnership that makes AI accessible to 800 million people. Out of this democratization have emerged open-source marvels like Maya-1 and Luna—voice AIs that speak and sing with human-like emotion.
In healthcare, Shah highlighted the irony of scarcity and abundance: rural India still needs hospital beds, but Hyderabad’s Genome Valley alone has the world’s highest cluster of US FDA-approved plants, with India supplying 40% of America’s generic drugs.
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From the prosperity of the Jio World Center to the resilience of Dharavi, Shah said, India’s beauty lies in its contrasts. “This nation cannot be captured in data or equations,” he reflected. “You must feel his chaos—for he is a creation in chaos.”
Acknowledging this paradox, he said, “We don’t just understand India – we become part of its infinite becoming.”
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