Executives of hi-tech companies and their investors may well be haunted by memories of the 2002 tech-stock bubble as Indian companies boom amid global economic uncertainty. But this is being seen as merely a segment of the success that led Goldman Sachs to suggest in a report last January that India's economy will outgrow Britain's in a decade. Those monitoring this growth on behalf of Hong Kong investors acknowledge that India's tech and outsource sector may not wholly escape the credit-crunch fallout in the United States. But both here and in India, there is a feeling that strength and growth can still be found in sectors other than those hit by jittery markets. Traders and investors specialising in India appear confident of continuing to find opportunities for growth. The global march of the Tata Group, which this month unveiled the world's 'cheapest car', is just one example. Another is Hindustan Computers and its 14,000-rupee (HK$2,764) laptop - touted as the world's most economical. Tata, though, has had bigger fish to fry, as seen with its takeover in January last year of the Anglo-Dutch steel giant, Corus, in an US$11.3billion deal. And India's former colonial masters are waiting to see whether Tata's bid for Land Rover and Jaguar can preserve the pride of the two British car brands. One Hong Kong-based Indian, who is an analyst with an investment bank, said such headlines were 'a clear example that Indian companies have begun to show the strength of their innovation and understanding of market dynamics'. 'Indians are indeed making it big not just domestically, but on an international scale,' he said. 'This highlights the slow but steady penetration of the benefits of a growing empowered capitalism which understands the needs of consumers.' As markets worldwide display more bearish signs, the prospects for India are seen as more promising. 'Most investors look at India as a sustainable all-round growth story, and I share the view wholeheartedly,' said the analyst, who asked not to be identified. 'Given the massive gulf and potential for infrastructure, I would hazard the risk of saying that the economy definitely has the room to sustain a 7 per cent-plus growth for the next 15 years.' Thanks to reforms by the Reserve Bank of India and market regulators, the global crisis of confidence 'has hardly made any feathers flutter in the Indian banking arena'. 'Healthy reforms in the market have helped manage the transition from a socialistic mixed-economy hodgepodge to a more measured, potentially benevolent, capitalistic set-up. India has seen inflation concerns being managed reasonably well versus China, which is currently struggling,' he said. According to official reports, 1,084 foreign institutional investors, registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, have invested a total of US$58.37billion in the Indian equities markets since the early 1990s. The success of the two main bourses, the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange, has highlighted a problem that plagues other emerging economies - severe poverty. The analyst said that Indians working in Hong Kong's finance industry were conscientious about the plight of many back home suffering from a lack of opportunity wrought by poor infrastructure and dire basic facilities. 'I had not imagined that the adoption of information technology would cause such a dramatic pace of change, and what I now see in India clearly sends shock waves. 'While the disparities in income continue to remain a major issue and potentially, in my opinion, the most disturbing of social ills, we are seeing gradual efforts being made by corporates, NGOs and social entrepreneurs to play a vital role in bringing these underprivileged classes into the mainstream.'
