Indian businesses must be competitive on cost, scale, resilience: BCG

Davos: With India making a power-packed presence here for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, consultancy major BCG’s India Head Rahul Jain has said the Davos takeaway for the Indian business leaders is very clear that the competitiveness now comes from combining cost, scale and resilience.

Jain also said that India is very likely to become the world’s third-largest economy by around 2030, which is a key India-related topic of discussion here during the summit. “The key question is whether growth can be further accelerated to reach this milestone as early as 2028, and achieving this faster trajectory will depend largely on accelerating the manufacturing sector further from roughly 15-17 per cent of GDP today to 20 per cent and beyond,” Jain told PTI. “In that sense, the issue is less about if and more about when,” he said. Jain, who is here for the five-day WEF Annual Meeting beginning Monday, said investments in sunrise sectors, such as clean energy, electronics, and semiconductors, are creating new growth engines in India. He also said scaling electronics, automotive components, renewable-energy hardware, data centres, and the emerging semiconductor ecosystem can deepen India’s integration into global value chains. “Ultimately, success will depend on Indian firms’ ability to compete globally, delivering quality, reliability, export readiness, and compliance with tightening environmental standards. With disciplined execution, India is well-positioned to capture this opportunity and accelerate to become the world’s third-largest economy,” he said. Jain said the clearest message from Davos this year is that geopolitics now actively shapes trade and value-chains as much as economics. Tariffs, export controls, subsidies and regional blocs are remapping commerce, replacing the predictability of traditional trade rules with deal-based and alignment-driven trade, he said.