From Chennai to Davos, it's a flying start for India Inc in New Year

It’s jet-set-go time for the who’s who of India Inc! Two back-to-back investor summits followed by the world’s most powerful economic forum, the C-suite executives have their calendar packed in the new year.    

From Chennai’s Trade Centre at Nadambakkam to Gandhinagar’s Mahatma Mandir, many chieftains of industry are crisscrossing the country to attend the global investor summit of Tamil Nadu and the marquee Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit (VGGS) before flying to Davos in Swiss Alps to brainstorm at the World Economic Forum.
 

In 2024, the first stop for India Inc was Chennai where 20,000 people participated in a two-day meet. 

Among the industry bigwigs who participated were Mahindra group chairman Anand Mahindra, JSW group chairman Sajjan Jindal, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone managing director Karan Adani, Godrej chairperson Nisaba Godrej and Ola Electric Founder & CEO Bhavish Agarwal. Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani attended the meet virtually. And It rained investments with commitments touching Rs 6.64 trillion and as many as 2.69 million jobs.

That done, the showstopper, Vibrant Gujarat is slated for January 10-12.

   

As a precursor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the Gujarat Global Trade Show on Tuesday. He also held meetings with global CEOs including Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of Micron Technology, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, group chairman & CEO of DP World, Toshihiro Suzuki, representative director & president, Suzuki Motor Corp.

PMO India posted on X (earlier Twitter) that the Prime Minister and Toshihiro Suzuki discussed Maruti Suzuki's plans to make India a strong player in the global automotive market by exporting Made in India vehicles, along with deploying global best practices related to vehicle scrapping and vehicle recycling into India.

The PMO handle also posted about discussions with DP World to further bolster investment in India, especially pertaining to creating sustainable, green, and energy-efficient ports and world class sustainable logistic infrastructure. And with Micron’s Mehrotra about efforts to enhance the semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem in India.

The Vibrant Gujarat summit will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi on Wednesday where billionaires Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal are expected. Besides Tata group chairman N Chandrsekaran, top executives of Microsoft, Alphabet and Toyota are likely to participate in the summit.

Vibrant Gujarat, which is celebrating 20 years, is hoping to forge a record number of memorandum of understanding this year, surpassing its previous best of 28,360 signed in 2019.

Zipping from Vibrant Gujarat, many industry leaders will make their way to take part in the mighty Davos meet from January 15 to 19 where 100 governments, all major international organisations and industry leaders will be in attendance.

From India, industry leaders from across the spectrum are expected to attend – Tata group chairman Chandrasekaran, JSW group chairman Sajjan Jindal, Gautam Adani and Pranav Adani (Adani Group), Sunil Mittal (Bharti Enterprises), Rishad Premji (Wipro) are expected to participate.

From the world of finance, Dinesh Kumar Khara, SBI chairman, Sanjiv Bajaj, chairman and managing director, Bajaj Finserv, Amitabh Chaudhry, Axis Bank MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance MD & CEO, Tarun Chugh are some of the industry captains who will be there this year. Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das is likely to fly to Davos as well—a departure from his virtual participation in the past.

For some from India Inc, however, the final stop this month could well be the Ram Mandir consecration at Ayodhya on January 22.

(Ishita Ayan Dutt, Shine Jacob, Manojit Saha, Dev Chatterjee contributed to the story)