MUMBAI: Billionaire banker-entrepreneur Uday Kotak on Tuesday prodded India Inc to invest for India's future. Kotak's warning came as the country is being looked at as a laggard in AI technology investments. This is the primary reason that India's stock market has turned from being one of the most favoured among emerging markets to one of the least invested over the past couple of years.
Kotak Highlights Google's Massive AI Investment
Kotak, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), pointed out that Google, one of the global tech giants, despite being cash-rich is raising $80 billion (translating to about Rs 7.6 lakh crore). The Silicon Valley-headquartered tech major is raising funds to "rapidly scale its AI infrastructure and global computing capacity," a report said.
Kotak pointed out that Google's annual profit was $160 billion and it clocked $62 billion in the last quarter, commanding a market capitalisation of $4.5 trillion. "That is close to total profits and market cap of all Indian listed companies put together," he said.
A Wake-Up Call for India Inc
According to the former banker, "(it's) a wake-up call to all companies to invest in the future, whatever the present may be. Now that IPL is done and dusted, time for India to focus on business of business." In business circles, often the IPL is called 'the business of cricket'.
Kotak's remarks underscore the urgency for Indian companies to ramp up investments in artificial intelligence to remain competitive globally. With Google's aggressive capital expenditure, India risks falling further behind in the AI race unless domestic firms accelerate their own spending on technology and innovation.
