Union defence minister Pranab Mukherjee today urged the managers of business and industry to take up as a challenge to create a win-win situation where the basic economic issue in rural areas are addressed while their businesses grow. | |
| "Can businesses develop a model of rural investment, thus setting on roll a cycle of income generation, increasing disposable income, leading to greater demand and supply for goods and services, and improving overall economic prosperity at the grassroot level?" he asked the delegates while inaugurating the 32nd National Management Convention here today. |
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| While boasting of India's strong fundamentals in terms of GDP growth and economic reforms, Mukherjee, however, said that the circles of exclusion are still there and economic disparities are still looming large on the horizon. |
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| Hence, much like the return of the prodigal son, nationwide development must return to the corporate conference room and occupy a central place in all managerial discourse, he said. |
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| Earlier, delivering the keynote address, K V Kamath, managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank Limited, gave a businessman's interpretation to the same sentiment by announcing that the rural opportunities are going to be the next big opportunity after the global opportunities. |
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| Creation of mass markets through affordable prices, and transforming the inclination to change the mass markets into business opportunities were the two suggestions he put forward. |
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| Giving his own example, Kamath said that the transactions at the ICICI Bank's branches have come down to 25 per cent of its total transactions in 2005. This, even as the customer base now touched 14 million from below one million four years ago. In 2000, the branches alone handled 94 per cent of the total transactions. |
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| He termed the ability to change and response to change as the key factors of a company's growth. Satyam's Ramalinga Raju, who is the chairman of the two-day event, and Sunil Alagh, president of the All India Management Association (AIMA), also addressed the meeting. |
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