At Edelweiss Credit Conclave 2020 eminent panelists Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, Kishore Biyani, CEO of Future Group, Anil Singhvi, chairman of Ican Investment Advisors, Rajeev Gupta, founding partner of Arpwood Capital and Nilesh Shah, MD of Kotak Mutual Fund discussed at length about unleashing true potential of the Indian economy.

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Singhvi is of the belief that the slowdown in the economy is not seasonal but structural, which needs to be addressed quickly. India, according to him is like a supertanker. The momentum has slowed down, which is okay but if it comes to a stop stage then it would take a while before it could restart,” he said.

“My experience in last 35-40 years in corporate world is that we see this kind of blips coming in. We need to have a set of mind which can correct this. People at the policy level and at the government level should be aware of it and should be more proactive than what they are today. "I don’t think we are in a scenario that will be completely over. India can never be over. At the end of the day we are people who can get excited on small things, one cricket match can excite us, while economy is a much larger thing,” Singhvi added.

Talking about slowdown witnessed in their business, Kishore Biyani said, “In consumption business we are looking for growth and for us growth means double-digit growth. We have come down from double-digit growth to a single-digit growth and that is not showing a positive trend yet.”

However, there is need to get into a good frame of mind, talk positive, have positive events happening every day and once positivity comes back, we will be back because there is nothing majorly wrong that has happened, said Biyani. "I think the negative thoughts have overpowered our positive thoughts and we have to come back to positive thinking," he added.

Meanwhile, Nilesh Shah of Kotak MF said, “Slowdown is real, there is no debate about it; maybe a better word is growth recession to make things positive to people.”

“Some slowdown is for right reasons, for example earlier we had real estate sector where consumer interest was never bothered about. Now with Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) you have cleaned up real estate sector, there is bound to be a slowdown. Earlier we had fiscal deficit running in double-digit and now it is in higher single-digit. It’s still high but growth will suffer when you cut down from double-digit to higher single-digit,” Shah added.

First Published:Jan 8, 2020 2:58 PM IST