India will be the engine of the global growth train in the coming days, says Nilesh Shah at the Kotak Insight Summit

At the Kotak International India Insight Summit in New York, Kotak AMC Managing Director Nilesh Shah painted a vivid portrait of a nation that defies conventional economic logic: India, the paradox driving progress.“India is the engine of the global growth train in the days ahead,” he declared, tracking the country’s extraordinary mix of contradictions and triumphs.

On the one hand, India is often urged to further open its markets to global investors. But as Shah noted, it is already the only major economy where foreigners hold majority stakes in the largest listed companies across all sectors – from banking and automotive to telecom, FMCG and asset management. The country, unlike China, freely allows platforms such as Meta, Google, X and Amazon to operate, reflecting its confidence in openness and competition.Investment flows also tell a story of promise and patience. India attracted $81 billion in foreign direct investment last fiscal – about 5% of global inflows. Yet net gold imports have surpassed $500 billion in the past 25 years, quietly turning the country into something of a “capital exporter,” as Shah noted, a testament to both consumerism and wealth creation.

India’s technological landscape, he says, is a study in contrasts. The country still depends on foreign partnerships for advanced jet engines, but domestic pioneers like Agnikul Cosmos are rewriting the rules and building the world’s largest single-piece 3D printed rocket engine. ISRO has soft-landed on the moon’s south pole on a modest budget and launched 104 satellites in a single mission – an unprecedented global achievement.

In the field of artificial intelligence, India lacks its own large-scale basic model, yet telecom giants Jio and Airtel have opened global partnerships that make AI accessible to 800 million people. This democratization has spawned open-source wonders like Maya-1 and Luna – voice AIs that speak and sing with human emotions. On the healthcare front, Shah highlighted the irony of shortage and abundance: Rural India still needs hospital beds, but Hyderabad’s Genome Valley alone is home to the world’s highest cluster of US FDA-approved factories, with India supplying 40% of US generics.Also read | Quant Small Cap Fund reduces stake in RBL Bank and six others comprising Jana Small Finance Bank and Thyrocare Technologies in October

From the opulence of the Jio World Center to the resilience of Dharavi, Shah said, India’s beauty lies in its contradictions. “This nation cannot be captured in data or equations,” he reflected. “You have to feel the chaos of it – because in that chaos lies creation.”

By embracing this paradox, he said, “we not only understand India – we become part of its endless becoming.”

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