Ambani says Trump will see a wholly new India

Mumbai: As U.S. president Donald Trump began his visit to India today, Mukesh Ambani made an assertive case for India at the Future Decoded CEO Summit in Mumbai.

In conversation with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the Reliance Industries chairman said the India of 2020 is a very different country to what previous visiting presidents may have seen. What previous presidents, dating back to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W Bush may have seen, India is a transformed country and well on its way to becoming a digital society.

Even the India of 2015, the year Barack Obama visited, was nothing like what it is today, he said.

And what is driving this deep and transformative change?

Ambani said it is the deepening of mobile networks that is giving real momentum to change.

“It all kickstarted in 2014 when the PM (Narendra Modi) gave us the vision of Digital India... 380 million people have migrated to Jio's 4G technology,” he said.

Pre-Jio, the data speed in India used to be 256 kbps. Post-Jio, it is 21 mbps, he pointed out.

“I have no doubt in my mind that we will be among the top three economies in the world,” Ambani said, adding that the only point to debate is whether it happens in five or in ten years.

“We in India have the opportunity to become the premier digital society,” he stated.

“The next generation will see a very different India than what you (Nadella) and I have grown up in,” he said.