India - The Theatre of Step Function Disruption
Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board, Infosys;
Co-Founder and Chairman, EkStep;
Founding Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
Chief Investment Officer,
Emory Investment Management
Founder,
Infosys
Co-Founder and Chairman,
Aarin Capital;
Chairman,
Manipal Global Education
Chairperson, Excellence Enablers Private;
Limited Former Chairman, SEBI, UTI and IDBI
Chairman and Managing Director,
Havells
Chief Investment Officer,
Amansa Capital
Managing Director and
Head of South Asia,
BII
Founder and CEO,
Zerodha
President,
Catamaran Ventures
President,
IVCA
Co-Founder,
SALT
Partner,
3one4 Capital
Co-Founder, Licious
Co-Founder,
Licious
Co-Founder and Group CEO,
Betterplace
Co-Founder and Group COO,
Betterplace
Co-Founder and CEO,
Open
Co-Founder and CEO,
KukuFM
Co-Founder and CEO,
Dozee
India is now the third-largest startup ecosystem globally, behind only the US and China. It has over 104 unicorns, having passed 100 unicorns in JFM 2022. India’s growing digital interconnectedness presents a wealth of opportunities for investors. With $120B invested, 800M internet users, 400M millennials, and $2T in UPI transaction volumes, there is tremendous value creation underway at an unprecedented scale.
This is the decade that India will realise its promise of growing into a $5T GDP economy, and tech could contribute at least $1T in market cap to drive this transformation. However, as markets correct, India’s startups and investors will have to demonstrate maturity in capital utilisation and allocation. The combination of high governance and a focused path towards sustainability will have to serve as the fundamental substrate for the ecosystem this decade. India must also capitalise on its leadership in pioneering Digital Public Goods to expand the market size and include all its citizens in this transformation. This conversation with Nandan Nilekani, Srinivas Pulavarti, and Saurabh Mukherjea will explore how India has supported step function growth so far and must now position itself to become a top destination for global capital while demonstrating leadership in inclusive innovation.
The business environment undergoes major shifts every cycle, creating new challenges and opportunities. The companies that transform into enduring institutions are consistently the market leaders. These leaders embrace shocks and challenges, often with limited visibility, and respond using first principles that have served as anchor motivations over decades. What are the mental models and frameworks that leaders have used to make these decisions that shape their organisations? How have they balanced the tension between capital and ideas, efficiency and flexibility, consistency and change, and product or purpose to build resilient systems that scale? How have they empowered their people to maintain business continuity over generations? How do they think about and plan for the legacy of their institutions to continue into the future?
This candid conversation will draw on the experiences and learnings of the leaders that have built generation-defining organisations to answer these important questions.
The interplay of entrepreneurship, capital, and policy is analogous to the famous three-body problem in physics, wherein one can’t predict the movements of three bodies due to how they influence each other. This leads to a dynamic system of deterministic chaos – a phrase industry participants are all too familiar with.
The last 2 decades were marked by breakneck disruption, characterised by the infamous mantra of “move fast and break things”, the consequences of which are being felt now. Regulations have tightened, business model assumptions have come undone, and capital has moved from the forefront onto the fence. The time has emerged for a new paradigm that should serve as a framework for the future. This panel explores how the dynamic between innovation, capital, and policy has evolved, how to rebuild bridges between them and the standards we must set together for the digital economy.
The demand on tech entrepreneurs today is not just to build a great product, but also to maintain excellence and achieve credibility as they scale their companies. Founders need to become exemplars of unquestionable honesty and integrity in order to inspire the best from their teams. As founders evolve into leaders, they develop strengths in attracting, enabling, empowering, and retaining the best and the brightest talent to achieve the objectives of an institution. At scale, they are catalysts for change in meritocratic and transparent environments where collective action breeds excellence. Narayana Murthy discusses his thoughts and experiences in leading innovation, impact, and generational transformation over decades.
In this Fireside Chat with Mohandas Pai, they will explore how founders must think about establishing a legacy, not only for themselves but for their companies as they go global and multi-decadal.