Our contrarian bet of Rs 3.5 lakh crore in a single investment in India paid off handsomely, says Mukesh Ambani

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Sunday said that India represents the biggest investment opportunity in the world right now and its economy will treble in size to $7 trillion from $2.5 trillion in the next decade.

Ambani, who was speaking at an Economic Times event, said Reliance took a contrarian bet to invest Rs 3.5 lakh crore in India and that has paid off handsomely. “The country represents the biggest investment opportunity in the world right now,” he said.

“A few years ago, the fashion in India was to invest abroad. If you don’t invest abroad, you are left out. We took a contrarian bet and invested over Rs 3.5 lakh crore in a single bet in India. The significant portion of that investment is in Jio,” Ambani said.

Taking a jibe at incumbent telecom operators, Ambani said even some ragging by incumbents is tolerable and fun and we can still be friends.

“Jio provides critical infrastructure to India and India needs to participate in the global economy as first-class citizens at par with any other country. Not that ‘vahaan pehle hota hai aur India mein dus saal ke baad hota hai’ (it first happens abroad and India only gets it 10 years later),” Ambani said.

Last month, while speaking at the India Mobile Congress, Ambani had said the Indian economy will grow from $2.5 trillion to over $7 trillion to rank among top 3 economies in next 10 years.

“Data is the new oil and India does not need to import it. We have it in super abundance and we have to ensure every Indian has access to it. Data is the oxygen of a digital economy, we cannot deprive Indians of this vital life-sustaining resource. We have to provide Indians the ubiquitous access to high speed internet,” Ambani had said.

“Growth in India’s mobile data market is unparallelled in world. India’s 4G coverage will be larger than 2G coverage in next 12 months,” Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani had said.

Since its launch, Jio has been locked in a bitter market place battle with older telecom players led by Bharti Airtel. The incumbent telecom operators have accused it of using deep pockets to disrupt the market to create monopoly.

[“Source-timesofindia”]