KEY POINTS:
Paul Bradley must have a nose for high-growth moments. The cheerful, outgoing executive arrived in Shanghai in 1990 when it was still a decade from becoming a world-class metropolis. Pudong Island on the other side of the Huangpu River was just paddy fields and its gleaming skyscrapers were not even a gleam in the eyes of the city fathers.
Two years ago, Bradley made a strategic switch and touched down in Mumbai, India. It has the same feel that Shanghai had back in 1990, says Bradley, who is now president of Arshhiya Technologies, a hi-tech logistics firm based in Mumbai.
Bradley isn't the only one thinking that way and that was starkly on display at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) jamboree in New Delhi. It was the WEF's 22nd annual meeting in New Delhi but the bullish mood gave it a feel of the Klondike in 1897 before the Gold Rush.
The scene-stealer was telecom czar Sunil Mittal who made sure that the spotlight swivelled towards him by announcing a tie-up with Wal-Mart, the world's biggest and toughest retailer. The announcement caught people off guard because Mittal had been in talks all summer with British supermarket giant Tesco. Foreign retailers such as Wal-Mart still aren't allowed to sell directly in India so Mittal says the new tie-up will be for wholesale (cash-and-carry) operations.
A few hours later it was the turn of French hospitality giant Accor. The French company is teaming up with Arab plutocrat Mohamed Ali Alabbar of Emaar - which is now the world's largest listed property developer - and his Indian partner to open 100 budget hotels in the next decade. Accor cranes and bulldozers will move into action speedily and it aims to open 20 hotels in the first two years and have 50 hotels at the end of five.
Says Alabbar: "India is a key growth market for us."
In a less blase era the Accor deal would have been the talk of the town.
Last week it barely excited comment. In fact, it was followed two days later by the Hilton group tying up with Indian developer DLF to build about 75 hotels in the coming years. DLF aims to build hotels with its residential and mall complexes and turn them over to Hilton to manage.
In fact, even Sunil Mittal wasn't allowed his Wal-Mart moment in the sun for very long. Two days later, Indian tycoon Kumarmanglam Birla announced that he's also getting out his shopping cart and making a multi-billion push into retailing. Birla runs a commodities to mobile phones conglomerate and belongs to one of the oldest and most famous families in Indian business.
There's now talk that Birla is filling the gap left by Mittal and holding talks with spurned suitor Tesco.
Meanwhile, Kishore Biyani, the feisty entrepreneur who's currently India's retail king, also joined the game by announcing that he wants to be a Farm to Fork company and will be making an ambitious thrust into the agricultural sector to tie up supplies for his supermarkets.
What's happening? The fact is that India is having its China moment and it's happening faster than anyone dared to predict. All the signals are green and everyone's suddenly racing to clamber aboard the speeding train as it belts down the tracks. Alabbar's Dubai-based Emaar has put together an ambitious masterplan to spend more than $1 billion in coming years on everything from hotels to hospitals and software parks. It recently opened the country's largest convention centre in Hyderabad, south India.
The WEF delegates might have been even more excited about India if they had seen the latest quarterly growth figures released later in the week after they had returned to their homes in different corners of the world. In the second quarter the economy powered ahead at a Chinese-style 9.2 per cent.
How did that break up? The services sector is racing along at 13.2 per cent and manufacturing, until a year ago considered a less favoured child, speeded up to 11.9 per cent. Only agriculture slipped to 1.7 per cent and that's partly because the second quarter is never great for the sector.
The boom-time mood is being reflected in the stock market where the bulls are stomping around the arena, breathing fire in all directions. Back in May the market touched a dizzying 12,700 and then went crashing downwards. The analysts said the market would be stuck in the doldrums but then were caught by surprise when it came roaring back. It hit at 13,845 on Friday which marked a 47 per cent rise since January 1. Buyers are snapping up everything from infrastructure to technology stocks. And Indian infotech companies are now clinching deals that would once have been reserved for the IBM's and Accentures of this world.
Check out the different sectors and it isn't tough to see why the market's ablaze. Look, for instance, at telecommunications. In September, Indians took 7.1 million phone connections and may have finally sped past China as the world's top telecom market.
If you have more faith in bricks and mortar, check out mall mania. There were an estimated 150 malls across the country by the end of last year hoping to lure the shop-till-you-drop brigade. That's slated to touch about 350 by the end of next year.
The amazing fact is that Indians didn't really figure how spectacularly well the economy was faring till quite recently. Barely a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister was talking about achieving 10 per cent growth without realising that it was closer than he ever dreamed. Some economists now confidently predict that 12 per cent is easily achievable.
What's the downside in all this? Firstly, there's the world economy and the slowing American housing market that could bring the roof down on global growth figures. More importantly, as capacities build up the slightest stumble could send everything for a toss.
Says R. Balakrishnan, director, Parallax Consulting: "What will happen in two years' time when cement production is up by 30 per cent or more?"
The key fact is that a China moment isn't enough. The Chinese have been pelting along at around 9.5 per cent for two decades. India's getting off to a great start but there's a long road ahead.
