Sighting of not getting much support from the Government, Bharti Group Founder and Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal on Monday said that Indian companies should also go out and invest more globally, even though there are risks.
“Indian companies in my mind are very risky – both geographically and from the business returns point of view – we do not get chaperon from the Indian Government. We are far from it and in fact, I was complaining about we do not get enough support,” Mittal said here at the India Global Forum.
He said the Indian companies are taking "extra ordinary risk'', to be in very difficult places because the fact is not by choice.
“You can’t go and invest in telecommunications in Europe or Japan or America. The places left are Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or other South East Asian countries, Africa and to some extent Latin America,” he said.
Therefore, he said, “As a nation we must expand ourselves to the world. We can’t be just sitting in a market of 1.2 billion people for the world. We need to pick up their markets at the same time and that should be encouraged. And, we are taking enormous risk in going out.”
He said Bharti is in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and some of the most difficult areas like North Africa where ‘boko haram’ activities are in peak now. “We suffer some damage to our facilities almost every month and perhaps every week now,” he highlighted.
He said if there are capacities for certain companies to go out and scale out even more outside India, they should be very much welcomed and sometimes there are strategic reasons to do it.
“I don’t have it but perhaps pharmaceutical companies would have it because you need to produce locally as there are certain environmental issues and law and policies to produce locally. Today, Indian software industry, which is coming to $100 billion range, ends up sending people abroad and there is globalisation,” he added.