Happy Independence Day everyone.
I write this piece from a hotel room in London, the country from which we got our independence 79 years ago. How ironical, or how perfect! And the last 36 hours have made me compile some data points about why India is THE place to be for all of us wanting economic growth in our own lives.
No country is perfect. India isn't either. We still carry our share of unfinished business, bureaucratic friction, and uneven progress. But as a business journalist who has watched this market for years, I keep returning to a one simple realisation - the foundations here are stronger than most skeptics would believe.
We have a stock market that is large, liquid and genuinely diverse. We have a government that has made growth a clear priority. And we have an RBI that has earned its credibility the hard way - through inflation battles, currency management, and a consistent refusal to take reckless shortcuts. That combination is rarer than it looks. It gives us something most emerging markets still lack: the ability to sleep at night. No sudden policy shock wipes out an entire industry overnight. No quiet run on bank deposits threatens the system. The rules of the game can be frustrating, but they are largely predictable.
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Now look at what has been built on that floor.
In 2014 India was the world's tenth-largest economy, roughly $2 trillion in size. Today it sits sixth, with a GDP of $4.15 trillion and growth running at 7.7% in FY26. Economists already see first-quarter FY27 growth at 8% - the highest among major economies. That is not a one-off bounce. It is the result of formalisation, infrastructure spend, and a domestic demand base that keeps expanding. For an investor, the shift from tenth to sixth in a little over a decade is the kind of structural move that does not reverse easily. And it wont.
Recodnised startups have moved up from a few hundred to 2.4 lakhs startups - generating around 25 lakh jobs. India is the world's third-largest startup ecosystem, with GST payers up from 66.5 lakh in 2017 to 1.65 crore - formalisation of the economy at genuine scale.
The capital markets have kept pace. India is now the fifth-largest stock market in the world by value, roughly $5 trillion. Only the United States, China, Japan and Hong Kong sit ahead of us. Depth and liquidity matter. A market of this size can absorb serious capital without distorting prices. It can also offer genuine diversification across sectors that actually reflect the economy's growth engines - financials, consumption, manufacturing, infrastructure and technology services.
Digital public infrastructure has become India's quietest competitive advantage. There are 134 crore live Aadhaar holders - 94.6% of the population - on the world's largest digital identity system! (The JAM trinity is the envy of so many nations) Layered on top of it is UPI. In July alone the system processed 23.7 billion payments worth 29.9 lakh crore rupees. According to the IMF, India now handles close to half of every real-time digital payment on earth. This is not a fintech story for a few cities. It is the operating system of a large, complex economy.
The same seriousness shows up in space. Chandrayaan-3 made India the first country to soft-land near the Moon's south pole. The mission cost 615 crore rupees - less than many global movies. Even the to be released Ramayana or an upcoming Allu Arjun movie are reportedly costing more. That combination of ambition and cost discipline is rare. It signals a country that can execute complex engineering projects without the usual bloated budgets.
Defence tells a parallel story. Exports have risen 56 times in twelve years - from 686 crore rupees in FY14 to 38,424 crore rupees in FY26 - reaching more than 80 countries. Domestic defence production now stands at a whopping 1.78 lakh crore rupee number. For decades India was almost entirely a buyer. The shift toward becoming a meaningful supplier is still early, but the direction is clear and the numbers are no longer trivial.
Manufacturing has moved in the same direction. India is now the world's second-largest mobile phone maker. 99.2% of the phones sold in the country are made here, up from 26% in 2014. Mobile phones have become our single largest export item. Electronics production has reached 13 lakh crore rupees, with exports up eleven times over the same twelve-year period. The government has set a $500 billion target by 2030-31. Whether that exact number is hit or missed matters less than the trajectory. A supply chain that barely existed a decade ago is being built in real time.
Semiconductors are the newest piece. The first made-in-India chip rolled out this July from Sanand, Gujarat. The government has committed over two lakh crore rupees to the sector, with twelve projects and 1.5 lakh crore rupees worth of investment already lined up. Five years ago this capacity simply did not exist. Building it from scratch is hard, capital-intensive work. The fact that it is happening at all changes the long-term risk profile of India's manufacturing ambitions.
Infrastructure has followed the same pattern of quiet scale. National highways have expanded 60%, from 91,287 km to 1,46,572 km. Expressways have grown 33 times. Logistics cost as a percentage of GDP has come down to 7.97%. These are not glamorous numbers, but they compound. Every percentage point reduction in logistics cost improves the competitiveness of every factory and every warehouse in the country.
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As I travel to various parts of our country for Tiger Safaris or work trips, I realise how convenient flying has become. Why? Because operational airports have more than doubled from 74 in 2014 to 166 today and India is now the world's third-largest domestic aviation market.
Energy has seen the most dramatic shift of all. Solar capacity has risen 58 times - from 2.8 GW to 164 GW. India crossed 300 GW of clean power capacity this month and hit its 2030 Paris target five years early. Half of the country's power capacity is now non-fossil. That is not a future aspiration; it is the present reality. For an economy still growing at 7 - 8%, the ability to add clean capacity at this speed reduces one of the classic constraints on emerging-market growth.
Taken together, these are not isolated wins. They form a pattern: digital rails that work at population scale, manufacturing that is climbing the value chain, infrastructure that is catching up, energy that is decarbonising while still expanding, and a defence industrial base that is finally starting to export. None of this happened by accident. It required policy continuity, capital, and an acceptance that results would take time.
So here is my view - Our country is no longer a tactical bet you hold for a few quarters and then rotate out of when valuations look stretched. It is a structural allocation you hold for decades. The combination is what makes it inevitable - a government that still wants growth, a central bank that has kept its word, forex reserves of $707 billion, inflation at 4.45%, GDP growth running near 8%, and a market deep enough to actually put serious money to work without constant liquidity worries.
There will be setbacks. There always are. Elections will create noise. Global cycles will test the rupee and the current account. Individual sectors will go through their own boom-and-bust phases. But the underlying direction - formalisation, scale in digital public goods, progressive build-out of manufacturing and energy capacity - has become hard to reverse.
That is the case that makes me tell every young person to invest in India. Not perfection. Not the absence of problems. Just a country that has spent the last decade quietly raising the floor under its economy while most observers were still arguing about the ceiling.
This cant be ended without a salute to the Armed forces. We sleep peacefully at night because our defence forces have time and again shown that they protect this country consistently for over eight decades in a neighbourhood that has rarely been peaceful. Their quiet competence is easy to take for granted. But as Manish Chokhani once told me - imagine being born in some of the neighbouring countries!
So once again - Happy Independence Day my fellow Indians. Here's to the next 20. I am looking forward to revisit this in 2047 and be truly surprised at what we will be. Jai Hind.
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