The CNBC-TV18 India Business Leader Awards (IBLA), India’s most coveted award for business excellence, turns 18 this year.

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Shereen Bhan, Managing Editor, CNBC-TV18, sat down with the IBLA Jury on Wednesday to discuss this year’s theme, ‘India @2023: Resilience to Resurgence’.

The Jury this year comprises Uday Kotak, MD & CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank; Sanjiv Mehta, CEO & MD, HUL; Anish Shah, MD & CEO, Mahindra Group; Dinesh Khara, Chairman, SBI; Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group; Adar Poonawalla, CEO, SII; TV Narendran, MD & CEO, Tata Steel; Prabha Narasimhan, MD & CEO, Colgate-Palmolive; V Vaidyanathan, MD & CEO, IDFC First Bank; Rajiv Memani, Chairman & Managing Partner, EY India; and Zarin Daruwala, Cluster CEO- India & SA Markets, Standard Chartered.

The panel kicked off with a talk on the RBI Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) , which Kotak thought was a little more hawkish than what the market expected and that he is not expecting any reduction in interest rates.

Khara, on the other hand, said that there could be a 25 bps increase. He also added that the penal interest rate rules will bring more order to the industry. Daruwala also expects a rate hike. “I think some statements that suggest that you're still worried about core inflation and I think the non-farm payroll data, also of us, that has also surprised a lot of people and with dollar strengthening and to defend the rupee,” she said.

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Shah stated that there is very strong consumption across sectors, while Mehta noted that the headliner growth for the year is still positive. On the other hand, Narasimhan stated that rural consumption is under serious pressure, but premium urban consumers are driving up demand, and there has not been a significant shift in downtrading yet. Prabha also noted that there is always more opportunity at the premium end of the market.

Kotak stated that corporates should be borrowing more from Indian financial institutions and that this is the time for the Indian financial sector to build its capacity and underwriting skills. Investors are looking for value, and according to Kotak, they are like different animals in the jungle with different strategies.

The bigger conversation however was about India’s growth and how its industries can grow.

Kotak pointed out that India has to focus on the middle corporates. India has to fix the missing middle. Consolidation among bigger players has happened significantly. “We have startups and the big guys, we have to create the middle to create a sustainable India,” he added.

Responding to Shah, Kotak said, “On the middle, it's a very important point and that is also upto the industries because if you look at the auto and track registries, we have developed a very large ecosystem, and many of them have become large corporates in their own right, not just MSMEs and they are supplying globally, as well. So we have created a very strong ecosystem in the industries that we are in. I think that will happen in many of our industries, as we go forward. In commodities and services, yes, we will have larger players, we have more consolidation. But as we start thinking of manufacturing in India, we will start generating a lot more MSMEs that will graduate beyond that.”

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Narendran also said that we need to look at the bigger picture. “I mean, there's no big manufacturing economy in the world, which doesn't have a strong MSME sector. They have world-class MSME companies, they may not be big in size, but they are world-class in quality. I think Germany is a great example. Korea is a great example. Italy is great. So I agree with Uday that we need to build that capability. The big companies also need to play a role there, because a lot of them are part of the supply chain or the big company,” he added.

Differentiating the startups from the MSME sector, particularly on why they are doing so well, Memani said that it is because of the global funding, which the middle does not get.

“But having said that, I think what I am seeing is that a lot of Indian manufacturing companies, the larger ones, when they look at their procurement list, they look at what are the items that they are importing. And more and more people now understand that the mood of the government is very clear that they want to encourage more and more manufacturing.”

The jury members also attributed India’s growth to the digitisation that is happening, and at such a large scale — providing businesses with more opportunities.

Memani even said that there is so much opportunity that he would be hiring 40,000 in 2023 and even more next year. “Technology is transforming at a massive space, both (in India) and more so what is happening outside India and the quality of work that's getting done in India,” he added.

The discussion ended with everyone talking about what according to them is the biggest risk and opportunity for India, to which Kotak said, “For a true resilient India, we should reach a point where we are not dependent on external financing for meeting our imports and that is something which is very critical. If geopolitics and other challenges happen, a current account deficit means we need dollar cheques to fill our hole. We have to correct that over a period of time, but it doesn't seem to be correcting itself over a long period of time. So that is one thing which always bothers me.”

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