EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2025 LIVE: Sajjan Jindal, Vellayan Subbiah & Harsh Mariwala Exclusive

Presenting the 26th EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, Shapers of India's future. Mr. Valan Subaya, thank you so much for being here and to moderate this incredible discussion. We have the very sharp, the very incisive managing editor of CNBC TV18, Miss Shireen Bhan.

Thank you all so much for being here. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. What an absolute pleasure it is to be back here at the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. I think I've done about 20 of these, so it's great to be back in this room. CNBC TV18 has been very proud to be part of these awards along with EY over the past two decades or so. You know, as I was walking up on stage, three entrepreneurs who should be adaptable and agile are telling me, 'Don't ask us anything out of syllabus.' So that's exactly what I am going to do this evening. But to pick up from where Rajiv Memani left off, he was quoting Javed Akhtar, so let me go a step ahead and quote Rumi. Rumi said that we choose our joys and sorrows before we actually experience them. Let me extend that to entrepreneurship and say we choose our success and failures before we actually experience them as well. And these three gentlemen here on the stage with me have had their fair share of successes but have also had some learning to do with the many tough decisions that they've had to encounter and take during the course of their careers. So without further ado, let me start. Sajjan Jindal, I'm going to start by asking you. Lots of jokes being made about suits. Everyone perhaps has watched President Trump's address to Congress this morning. It's the longest address in US history at over 1 hour and 40 minutes, and there was plenty there in terms of trade tariffs and so on and so forth. You know, the Prime Minister speaking just 24 hours ago said it is time for Indian industry not to play spectator. Indian industry needs to rise to the occasion, needs to take up the challenge, needs to go out there and become a part of global supply chains. As you look at what's happening around us in the world today, Mr. Jindal, do you see this as an opportunity or as a threat to India?

You're confident that we can do that, but the lament of the government, and this is from the Finance Minister more recently, the Chief Economic Advisor once again saying the private sector is not doing its part, private capex is not picking up. Why? If you believe that all of these opportunities exist and this is the moment for India, why are we still not seeing private investment pick up?

Valan, let me come to you as the winner of the World EY Award. You know, you look at the India trajectory today, and I've heard you speak previously about looking at what's happened in China and you believe China is going through its third phase of growth where it's now focused much more on high value added as well as innovation. If you look at what's happening in India today and we're talking about shaping India of the future, what's the role? Where do you believe we're in the cycle at this point in time?

Absolutely, Shireen. I think that if we look at our evolution, a lot of the growth in the first phase came from either building things that we were used to. Even we see industrial GDP formation, a majority of it came from the auto sector, sectors that have been in India for quite a while. But the new evolving sectors that have come about being in the service economy, for example with software development, with GCCs, all of that, that still doesn't allow for product innovation. If we're actually going to become part of global supply chains, we need to be innovating products here, building products and components here. That is a set of IP that needs to get developed in this country, which has to get done over the next decade. So product innovation is something that probably we've been a bit slower on.

Because why do you think that's the case? In this journey from becoming a service nation to a product nation, why do you believe we've been slow off the bat?

Honestly, I think there are two or three factors. One is that the ecosystems have not existed to support it. If we look at how far behind we are, take the electronics ecosystem for example. Starting with just printed circuit boards, we don't make advanced printed circuit boards in this country. So to think of the entire downstream industry from that, it takes a long period of time to develop. Pretty much any sector you take, it's a similar story where a lot of base components are still imported into India, and therefore the whole ecosystem around it is not developed.

Are we closer to breaking out of that now? Are we closer to moving more towards IP-led and innovation-led ecosystems?

Absolutely, I believe it's the only way to go. I think most people now, because of the size of each of these segments beginning to pick up, I do believe we're beginning to move towards that.

Mr. Mahindra, that's what you've spent your entire career on, sir. Your entire career at building Mahindra has been about innovation, it's been about focus. How do we create a culture of innovation? How do we go from being a services economy to, as Valan said, a product nation? So you're talking at industry level or talking of country level, with the sector if you like.

No, I think at an organizational level, it's very important that you create the right culture of innovation. For that to happen, the biggest deterrent to innovation is the fear of failure. People are afraid to take risk because they fear that if I take a risk, and all innovations are not going to succeed, many of them are going to fail. As you rightly put it, failure is the only way to move forward. You learn from the failure and learn something else which will be a bigger success. So remove the fear of failure, encourage experimentation, encourage risk taking. It's the responsibility of top management. And have diverse talent. Diversity adds a lot of value to innovation within an organization. So you need to create a culture of innovation which is diverse, empowered, open, trusting, remove the fear of failure, and encourage your talent to take risk and experiment. Because only out of experiments will you decide whether you will succeed or not.

You know, speaking of risk-taking ability, let me come to you and get all three of you to actually talk about this. Because it's very different how you're all going about this. As you said, you're investing, in your words, the hell out of it at this point in time across different businesses, Mr. Jindal, including the latest foray into the electric mobility space. Now, should you go wide, should you go deep at this point in time in an uncertain environment? You're throwing everything at the wind at this point in time from cement to paint to sports to infrastructure, and so on and so forth. Conglomerates at this point with an uncertain environment, do you believe that the risks are higher or do you believe you've actually been able to diversify your risk by being a conglomerate?

Elon Musk, that's the cautionary message there coming in from Sajjan Jindal. But Valan, you know, I remember when we last spoke, you said that one of the mistakes that people make when they deploy their capital from cash flows that their running businesses are generating is to deploy the cash right back into the very same business. You believe in the power of compounding, but also you believe in the power of the fact that you should be deploying the cash that you're generating into other businesses and other opportunities that look good. You're doing a whole bunch of things from semiconductors to a whole bunch of things at this point in time. What gives you the belief? I mean, do you believe you're unstoppable as well, as Sajjan Jindal just said?

Serious? No, I have to learn from Sajjan definitely. But you know, we from the south, so we're always a bit more cautious and conservative. He's being very humble, but he's doing much more than me. But definitely, the area I agree with Saj on is that if you take the number of areas that need to get developed in this country, there's actually the number of white spaces is more than the number of spaces that are more occupied and crowded. We talked about semiconductors, there are so many sectors that just need to get built out from scratch in India because they still are such a small part of our GDP formation. We've traditionally either imported or depended on foreign companies and MNCs setting up that capability here. I think that this next shift that we're beginning to see is Indian companies beginning to own and develop IP and begin to develop in these sectors. I feel that that shift is what is allowing Sajjan and a lot of other entrepreneurs, including ourselves, to get into new areas because the white spaces will have to get filled by Indian players.

Yes, white spaces will have to get filled. Mr. Mahindra, you know, your colleagues are feeling pretty unstoppable at this point in time. But let's talk about India's consumption story. Because the belief and the hope is that we will see the consumption engine driving growth. How confident do you feel about that, and what would your message be to Indian entrepreneurs who are looking at India's consumers as the bet?

See, at one level, if you look at many products and many sectors, the penetration level and the usage is much lesser than global standards. So at one level, theoretically, there is a lot of potential. Now the biggest question is when will that happen? In the last two or three years, our sector has undergone some pressure because of lower growth rates. If you ask any player, they say it's a matter of monsoons, elections are coming, now the new budget has announced some concessions, income tax has been cut. That's what I'm saying. Until we see that, it's a lot of wishful thinking which is going on. I think many of us don't know what is happening really. But clearly, based on whatever I have found out, it's an issue of inflation, maybe unemployment. And again, going back to the question of investment which you asked Sajjan earlier, why is it not happening? Let me say that if any industrialist sees that his capacity is utilized or sees a potential by adding more capacity, they are not going to cut short that investment. Ultimately, it's because of lesser demand that investment is not happening. So that's why I'm saying consumption has to be given more boost than investment. Consumption happens automatically, investment will follow. And we've seen the budget take a different approach this time by prioritizing consumption.

Let me pick up a debate that started in Mumbai by your peer and your colleague, Mr. Uday Kotak. He started it off saying that Indian entrepreneurs and the next generation specifically needs to get out there, work hard, and not get into running family offices too early on. It was followed up by Harsh Goenka saying exactly the same thing, that we need the entrepreneurial spirit back, we need Indian entrepreneurs and the next generation to sweat it out as opposed to speculating, trading, and running family offices. Sajjan Jindal, do you believe that the next generation is happy running family offices as opposed to running businesses, and is this a problem?