Manish Sabharwal, Co-Founder of leading staffing services company Teamlease, that pulled off a successful IPO in the choppy environment of early 2016, weighed in with typical flourish on various issues as part of the inaugural panel at the Venture Intelligence APEX'16 PE-VC Summit (Bangalore; March 9). Some highlights:
"India's Brand is Warm - Not Hot or Cold"
India's brand is that 'We won't be Hot or Cold; we will be consistently Warm'. We will be 'between 5 and 8' - in terms of growth rates. If we are growing at 5%, don't worry, we'll soon go to 8%. If we are growing at 8%, then we'll pretty soon we will go down to 5%. I don't think we'll ever grow at 13%. Which is why, for us entrepreneurs, the current economic weather is not so relevant.
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Lessons from China - Decentralization and Strong Leadership
Decentralization and Strong Leadership are more important lessons to take from China than the virtues of single party rule and the ability take away land without asking. China's genius was not in some Ayotollah sitting in Beijing issuing Fatwas; it was in having mayors competing for investment. The important development of the last 18 months in India is that we are handing power to the States - which is why things like Labor Reforms are getting done. And as we hand over power even further to City leadership, things will get even better.
We are praying to One God - Jobs - and if we get that right, the rest will fall into place. We overestimate what policy can do in the short run, but underestimate what it can do in the long run. For the first time, we have a government that has a vision and plan to address all the areas that relate to jobs and productivity: Manufacturing; Urbanization; Labor Law Reforms ("where we have seen more action in the last 1 year than in the previous 20 years"); Ease of Doing Business; etc. We will see the fruits of changes in these inter-related areas over the next five years.
The Venture Intelligence APEX Private Equity - Venture Capital Summit is an annual one stop update point for the latest trends affecting the Investor-Entrepreneur Ecosystem and to enjoy great networking opportunities.