Ruchir Sharma, author, fund manager, Wall Street investor, political commentator and one who effortlessly wears a cap frothing with many more feathers, has always been the celebrated go-to guru when it comes to joining the dots. Be it between the apparent or even the inexplicable events spanning across politics, economy and global affairs. It was no-brainer therefore to expect insightful takeaways listening to him at the Express Adda in conversation with Anant Goenka, executive director, The Indian Express Group and Shyamal Majumdar, editor, Financial Express in Mumbai on Monday, August 28th evening.
In response to an opening question from Anant Goenka on China and the emerging new world order, Ruchir Sharma, whose business card perhaps just describes him as the chairman of Rockefeller International, founder and chief investment officer at Breakout Capital began by saying that the economic miracle of China was over and that here was a country that may focus more henceforth on geo-politics. But India, at the moment, he felt was attracting a fourth wave of foreign interest. The first wave being between 1991 and 1994, the second between 1999 and 2000 and the third in the mid-2000s. This time what was different was that this interest wave was catalysed by a dis-enchantment with China.
He albeit cautioned that it was not just India benefiting from this but there were other countries too like Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico, Eastern Europe (Poland for instance). There were lot of things that were going in India’s favour at the moment and one major factor in the recent years that had aided this process was the rapid move on digitisation that has been able to see the thus far financially excluded be in a position to reap the benefits of fund transfers without leakages.
Tech giants not challenged in US is a damning commentary
He also spent a lot of time looking at the changes in the US, particularly the edge and momentum it had gathered in the tech space. But he also reminded that the very fact that the tech giants retaining their foothold unlike in the past when giants like Intel and Cisco were challenged by others, was a damning commentary on capitalism.
Ruchir Sharma moved to Rockefeller in 2022 after a 25 year career at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, where he was Head of Emerging Markets and Chief Global Strategist.
Sharma has been a writer for longer than he has been an investor.