Ridham_Desai
India has done a lot of heavy lifting over the last few years, said Ridham Desai, head of India – equity research & India equity strategist at Morgan Stanley.
Calling it a quintessential self-help story, Desai said, “India is helping itself probably dominate the world. It’s already hazardous to forecast a decade so I wouldn’t go beyond that. But I think India has done a lot of heavy lifting over the past few years, especially over the last four or five years”, in an interview to CNBC Tv18.
He mentioned since the economy is coming out of COVID, the labor that was put in, in terms of policy and other things, is now bearing fruits.
Desai also believes that India could account for 20 percent of the growth that world will generate over the next 10 years. The country is becoming both the office and factory to the world and offshoring is a big positive trigger for India, he added.
Desai explained the GDP growth with reference to number of Indian citizens who can afford luxury items like Louis Vuitton purses. “Currently the households in India that earn in excess of US $ 35,000 a year is about five million. Based on our forecast, this number is likely to go to 25 million by the time we get to early 2030. So that’s a fivefold increase in the number of people that who can buy Louis Vuitton purses.”
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He said that the ‘office of the world’ as a theme has emerged post COVID. “It’s the silver lining to what was a pretty big human disaster – CEOs suddenly learned that working from home is okay. If you are working from home, you might as well work from Mumbai, it’s cheaper than working from Florida and that is why jobs are being shipped into India,” he explained.
Separately, Desai expects the share of Indian exports to double in the next decade. “We think that India’s share in global exports will double in the next decade. So we will be able to withstand some slowdown in global growth,” he said.
However, he added that incase there is a deep and broad recession amid an uncertain global scenario, it could create pain.
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Banking and financials, consumer discretionary, IT services and industrials including defence were named as the sectors to bet on over the decade by Desai.
