Bharat Shines

-- Lakshmi Nanda Madhusoodhanan, IIK Young Reporter

Thursday, August 6, 2020

“In this vast country of ours, people profess different religions, speak different languages, dress differently and observe different customs; but we are one nation; the history of our struggle for independence and our faith in our future development are our common bonds.”
- Lal Bahadur Shastri

India, also known as Bharat is a mesmerizing country with around 1.4 billion population, in the South of Asia. Our Motherland, India is not only opulent in its culture and heritage; it is also the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the third largest by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). India has overtaken UK and France and is now the fifth largest economy in the world with a GDP of $2.94 trillion.

The world’s best human resource is found in India. India has a vast number of consumers and a large, highly educated, and young talent base. India being the second most populous country in the world is home to around 700 million internet users and is home to a fifth of the world’s youth. Midst the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), India is the youngest country. In 2020, the working-age population in India is about 400 million. About a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion population is below the age of 14 and about half of the population is under the age of 25 years. In fine numbers, India is hard to beat. India adds around 10–12 million youngsters to its workforce every year. With that being said, India’s 10,000 engineering institutes produce more engineers than China and the U.S. combined.

The above reasons are few of the reasons why major companies around the world have started investing in India. Even though COVID-19 has hit the country hard with its economy rates dropping, India has been making headlines since January 2020 because of the major investments foreign companies are making. Yes, you read that right. Since the start of 2020, big US companies have put in $17 billion in our country. Among the flood of investments, there are Facebook, Amazon and Google too.

Facebook is the world’s largest social media company that owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Giphy and Mapillary. Reliance Industries is the biggest telecom operator in our nation with around 400 million subscribers. On April 23rd of 2020, Facebook invested $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms. Jio Platforms is a 3.5 years old Indian digital Company founded by Mukesh Ambani, which is a subsidiary of the nation’s most valued firm, Reliance Industries. The dominance of Facebook among Indian internet users is strong with around 400 million users who use WhatsApp and 100 million Instagram users. The company stated that the investment marks its “commitment to India”, where it will focus on work in partnership with Jio to create “new ways for people and businesses to operate more effectively in the growing digital economy.”

Whereas, Amazon recently invested $1billion, making the total local investment to date $6.5 billion. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has done this major investment in India, saying the country is a key growth market. Amazon’s CEO detailed that Amazon would invest $1 billion in digitizing small and medium businesses thus helping them to sell and operate online.

On the other hand, Google and Alphabet's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai on July 13th announced a $10 billion (?75,000 crores) investment in our country which is double the amount of Facebook’s investment. Google Inc. stated that its investment i.e. “Google for India Digitization Fund” focuses on areas such as affordable access to the internet and right to information for every Indian in their language. The investment also focuses on empowering businesses as well as Google’s existing projects such as Internet Saathi for spreading awareness of the Internet in rural villages and an artificial intelligence-based flood forecasting system, among others.

With all these being said, it is evident that these investments will provide a big win for employment in India. We are slowly approaching the dream of the people who have fought and sacrificed their lives for our country’s freedom. So, on this Independence Day, let us all take a word that we will serve our country, our motherland Bharat.