Hello and welcome to the India Today Business Today studio here at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It's day four and I'm joined by a very special guest, T. Narendran. He's the chief executive officer and managing director of Tata Steel, one of India's largest steel producers, one who understands the economy of this country and also the geopolitics that affects the Indian economy. Thank you very much for joining us. I want to ask some specific questions but let's get the macro backdrop set into this conversation. Over the last three or four years, whenever we have these conversations, the overall geopolitical uncertainty, first it was COVID, then supply shock, then something else and now of course the Trumpian trade order. Amidst all of this, as an Indian CEO, how do you see the current situation and how are you yourself coping with this uncertain business environment?
Yeah, thanks Sat for having me on the show. No, I think it's a pretty interesting period that we're going through and I think it has permanently changed the way you look at supply chains, you know, because
Yeah. Because over the last 100 years, you optimized, particularly the physical flow supply chains, the manufacturing supply chains, you optimized it on cost. Over the last 7 or 8 years, you started optimizing it on CO2, and now we are optimizing based on trade actions. And particularly if you look at capital intensive businesses like ours, you can't take investment decisions based on what's your outlook for the next 2, 3, 4 years. You build a steel plant, you expect it to run for at least 20 years. Absolutely.
Right. So I think it's increasingly become important to build resilience into your supply chains. In an ideal world, if you have locally sourced raw material and local markets, that's the safest supply chain that you would have. And countries like India which have a large domestic market are well positioned, and India is also rich in many input materials. So I think India is reasonably well positioned, but countries which don't have a large market or countries which don't have any input materials are the ones which are going to struggle. One quick follow up. The world of just-in-time, the global trade order led to that. You know, you could be manufacturing at one place but the inputs could be flying in virtually through courier 12 hours before that. Has that now also changed permanently?
Yeah, because again people are looking at localization, if not within a country, within a geography. So I mean it started with the US building walls. Europe is also building walls now. Europe is trying to make sure that it protects industry within Europe. What we call Atmanirbhar in India is being called strategic autonomy in other geographies, but the philosophy is the same. You have to first take care of yourself because you can't depend on global trade flows in this very volatile environment.
Might is right being the lead motive of US trade policy. Is this a permanent rupture, or do you see that once we get a deal done and also with the European Union, the tariff related impact across industry, I'm not only talking about your sector, will kind of be fully dealt with?
I think what's certainly happening, and we saw evidence of that over the last few days and weeks, there is certainly a realignment of trade flows. You saw what happened between Canada and China, you're looking at EU taking more interest in closing the trade deal with India. So I think people are all, just like we say we used to de-risk China, now you're also de-risking us in some sense of the term, right?
Yeah. So everyone is developing alternate markets. I think Makani in his speech also talked about that right. I mean you have to build your own alliances. You have to take care of your interests as a nation and hence build partnerships based on what you may not agree on everything but there may be some things that you agree with some countries and you use that to build relationships with those countries.
Yeah. And as long as the risk is acceptable you continue to, you know, a broader question: for the last 20 years we have seen multiple crises impacting and every crisis suggests to me that India responds, and while some people are saying that you are responding after a crisis, the fact is we respond, we somehow make it. Is that also playing out similarly that we have a trade-related crisis and as a consequence all of a sudden we have multiple engagements, conversations, conditions, and separately we are having reforms in the past year, 2026 we hope for many more. So do you think this is a response that is befitting the situation? You know, it's a bit like in organizations as well, you're constantly changing and improving but a crisis sometimes is a good opportunity to accelerate the process of change. And I think, even if you look at 1990 1991, what triggered this journey for India was a crisis, right? So I think, as they say, you should never waste a crisis, and I think India has probably not wasted a crisis. It continues to change but sometimes accelerate when there are provocations like this.
Let's turn the outlook to the steel sector. 2025 has been a decent year. One would imagine on the back of both domestic impulses and what is happening externally. Give us a sense of your own demand outlook for the current year and how it is likely to pan out.
