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Informist, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026

 

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--Sitharaman: We are living in unpredictable world 
--CONTEXT: Finance Minister Sitharaman speaking at an event in Delhi 
--Sitharaman: India borrowing to invest rather to consume 
--Sitharaman: FTAs opening doors to India's labour intensive sectors 
--Sitharaman: Corporates need to spend more on research, development 
--Sitharaman: Businesses must provide predictability, transparency 
--Sitharaman: Need professionalisation of MSMEs, family businesses 
--Sitharaman: Challenge is to see how many startups endure next 20 years 
--Sitharaman: Need to move to 'Imagined in India' from 'Made in India' 

 

NEW DELHI – Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman Tuesday called for Indian companies to not only look for increasing scale, but to also focus on quality, particularly in governance and technology. "As we work towards Viksit Bharat by 2047, the contribution of Indian management will be measured by the quality of enterprises and institutions we build today," she said at the National Management Convention of the All India Management Association here. "Let us, therefore, build not only bigger companies, but better companies--competitive, innovative, trusted and resilient enough to lead India through the decades ahead."

 

Sitharaman said business managers today need rigorous grounding in geopolitical supply chain risk, climate risk, behavioural science, data and regulation, and tech-aided project execution, calling for the need to overhaul management curricula for current techno-economic realities and better interdisciplinary learning. 

 

Over the next 20 years, India's challenge is not simply to keep creating more startups, it is to see how many of the current startups can become large, professionally managed and enduring corporations, she said. 

 

Sitharaman also urged companies to spend more on research and development, either in-house or through collaboration with academia, in order to drive innovation and improve existing products. "Our ambition must move from 'Made in India' to 'Imagined in India'--products not only manufactured here, but conceived, designed and technologically developed here, and then taken to markets across the world," she said.

 

The minister flagged that institutionalisation is a challenge for Indian enterprises. "We need professionalisation: separating ownership from management, defining responsibilities, preparing the next generation, and resolving conflicts before they affect the business itself," she said. 

 

She also urged corporate leadership to avoid designing only for the formal urban elite, adding that India's consumption base rests on working families across agriculture, rural construction, transport, and informal enterprise. "If corporate India pursues premiumisation for the urban tier alone, growth will lose its structural durability," she said.

 

The minister said India stands at a structural inflection point, adding that the next phase of consumption will be driven by upward mobility into brackets where discretionary spending accelerates. She also called for the commercial sector to seize the opportunities opened by the government's free trade agreements. India has steadily expanded its network of free trade agreements over the past few years, reaching nine deals spanning 38 countries. 

 

Sitharaman said India is now borrowing essentially to invest rather than to consume, highlighting that the economy has stayed resilient through an unpredictable period in the world economy. "In such an environment, resilience cannot mean retreating into economic isolationism," she said. "For India, resilience means deep domestic capacity, fiscal strength, and industrial scale, so that global shocks are absorbed without interrupting national development."  End

 

Reported by Pratiksha and Sagar Sen

Edited by Shubhayan Bhattacharya

 

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