Indian firms should list overseas, improve governance: Kris Gopalakrishnan

The global and domestic economy will grow and to capitalise on the same companies need to invest in innovation, he said

Stating that most Indian companies are "afraid" of competition, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishan on Wednesday said domestic firms should improve their corporate governance and compete at the international level.

He also said the companies should learn from the Indian IT industry, which is "world-class because of world-class governance", and develop start-up mindset to experiment with new technologies.

"We must go for global listings. We must attract global funding. IT industry, from where I come, is world-class because of world-class governance. There is a lesson to be learnt. It has zero debt when we are going through debt crisis in this country," Gopalakrishnan said at a CII event.

He said the global and domestic economy will grow and to capitalise on the same companies need to invest in innovation.

"If you are a big company, clearly you need to invest more on research and development. We need to create our own IPRs. We have to improve our governance. Our companies are not yet competitive at global scale. I am sorry to say. Very few companies are. That is why we are still afraid to compete," Gopalakrishnan said.

He said the global economy has grown from USD 11 trillion in 1980 to USD 80 trillion at present and is expected to triple in the next 30 years, adding that computing technologies have added significantly to this growth.

"Microsoft, Google and Amazon were not there before 1980. They were born in digital computing era. India went from USD 160 billion economy in 1980 to USD 2.8 trillion -- that is 18 times growth in the last 40 years," Gopalakrishnan said.

The government has set a target to make India a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025.

"We can debate will it happen in 2025 or 2030, but it will happen. I am confident that it will happen because India is a low-income country and we will become a middle-income country at the time we hit USD 5 trillion mark and we will hit USD 10,000 per per person per capita maybe by 2030. That time we will be actually USD 10 trillion economy, which is four times," he said.

The Infosys co-founder said that every industry will transform by then and established companies need to work on their strategies to align themselves with growth.