The South Asian Business Association (SABA) at Harvard Business School organized a one-day Inaugural India Business Conference on Sunday April 4, 2004. More than 700 people attended the conference, way more the number of people the organizer had anticipated. The conference had three keynotes speeches by Naina L. Kidwai, Pramod Haque and Rajat Gupta, two executive panel sessions dealing with Business Process Outsourcing and India 2020 and seven other sessions dealing with Venture Capital and Private Equity, Pharmaceutical and Biotech, Transformation of Traditional Businesses, Opportunities in South Asia, The Future of Organized Retail in India, Global South Asian and Social Enterprise.

Naina Kidwai, Managing Director and Vice Chairman, HSBC Securities and Capital Markets India Pvt. Ltd., thought that India's ratio of global market capitalization to GDP is still low and its global price/earnings ratio averages 16 to 17. The current GDP growth is not only driven by the IT sector but also by the infrastructure, automobiles, medical products and chemicals. "For the first time companies are engaging in why they should be in a particular business," she said.

Pramod Haque, Managing Partner, Norwest Venture Partners, talked about he highs and low of the VC funding. From a peak of $30B in 2000+ companies in Q300, the market was at about $4B in 453 companies in Q303. Today one must be able to build an enterprise software company for $15-20M and a communications equipment/component company for $30-35M. In order to meet the target, the companies today are "focusing on rediscovering the lost art of sales," said Haque. Also in some respects, the outsourcing market is driven not only by the established companies looking to reduce cost, but also by VCs such as Norwest who are looking for some component of outsourcing in the business plan in order to meet the cost targets.

Rajat Gupta, Senior Partner, McKinsey and Co., said, "Not only India can grow at 10% but it is essential." If India were to maintain status quo of 5.5% growth rate, in the next few years it will create 24M jobs and the unemployment rate will be around 16%. Assuming that India will continue to grow at 10%, it will create 75M new jobs and lower the unemployment rate to 7%. According to Rajat, "No country has gone from an agriculture economy to a service economy without having a strong base in manufacturing." As such, he believes that even though India has seen a phenomenal growth in IT sector, India needs to focus on manufacturing also.

In the retail world, "Ordinary people are buying what the rich can afford and a surprising number of consumers have accepted private label brands," said Kishore Biyani, Managing Director, Pantaloon, and sees the future in malls. Most of the people typically deal with family jewelers. However, "by allowing people to browse and selling at fixed price,' Vijay Jain, CEO, Intergold, has been able to open 14 stores with plans to expand to 25 stores within the next two years.

India 2020 panel featured Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Director, IMF, Anupan Puri, Special Advisor, General Atlantic Partners, Vikram Gandhi, Managing Director Morgan Stanley, and Desh Deshpande, Chairman, Sycamore Networks. According to Ahluwalia, (the Babu as per Prof. Khanna of HBS, the moderator), even though the world is retreating from world economies, India is embracing it. Looking ahead he sees that there will be regional differences in the growth rates which could lead political destabilization, the infrastructure to sustain an 8-10% growth is not there and fiscal deficit if not brought under control will impede the progress. "Between 1990 and today, it is like night and day," said Puri (the Baniya), "Today India is like a house which was closed for fifty years, whose windows are now open, there are still some cobwebs, needs cleaning but the fresh air is in." Today one can have intelligent business discussions, wealth building and best managerial practices. As per Gandhi, "In 2020 India will either be surging or plunging, definitely not emerging!" India has 70% of the population under 35, a 430M working population which is growing between 5-6M per year. In comparison, the IT industry will employ 1.5M people. The level of private investment is minimal, and Gandhi "sees a tough march ahead." In this world there are about 6B people and most of the effort have focused on the 1B people who make for than $2K per year. Deshpande see the future growth and potential to be able to serve the 5B people who make less than $2K per year.

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