“India’s China-plus-one strategy is working very well. My god, the FDI and the attention toward India is on another level. This is certainly giving tremendous wind in our sails,” Mittal said in an interview.

The growth rate of India’s economy was positive, which was apparent from the growth in industrial, agricultural and financial services sectors, Mittal said on the sidelines of the B20 Summit India 2023 in New Delhi.

“The economy is in a great shape. You see India is firing on all cylinders. My view is that if you look at industrial activities, agricultural activities, digital activities and growth of fintech, I think one can feel the momentum that China saw 20-25 years ago happening right here in India,” he said.

Mittal, who is Chair of the B20 India Action Council on African Economic Integration, said that he was hopeful of the inclusion of the African Union into the G20 as a permanent member, while backing the African continent as a source of food security amid supply challenges from the Russia-Ukraine war.

“Sixty percent of the world’s arable and yet uncultivated land is in Africa.Today, we have all seen the crisis that the world is going through in food production. Just adopt Africa as a place to do agriculture, perhaps some value-added agriculture… the entire world can change,” he said.

He was also hopeful of the recommendations made by the Action Council to be accepted by the G20, more so when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the world should focus on Africa. He added that countries that do not have adequate infrastructure can use India’s digital public infrastructure, or DPI, to leapfrog in order to create a modern digital infrastructure.

Bharti Airtel became one of the early adopters of Africa as a market for growth, when it acquired telecom operations from Zain back in 2009. Airtel Africa offers services in 14 countries across Africa and is now a profitable business.

Mittal declined to comment on when Airtel India, the country’s second largest telecom operator with more than 370 million customers, will increase headline tariffs.

The carrier had raised baseline tariffs across all its circles over the last couple of quarters, which led to an increase in the average revenue per user (APRU) to ₹200 as of the quarter ended June 2023.

“Tariffs need to go to ₹300,” Mittal said, reiterating the need for tariffs to rise further in order to get a return on capital employed by the telecom service providers.

However, he noted that the Indian market needed telcos that were financially sound, since the industry required massive investments on an ongoing basis.

“India is a large country, but yes, given the investments that the industry needs to make on an ongoing basis to support the digital dream of this nation, so I think financial viability is important,” he said.

He noted that Indian telecom service providers were playing a key role in providing connectivity, a role that would become more critical over the next five-to-seven years when over one billion people will have smartphones.

On the issue of artificial intelligence (AI), Mittal said regulation has to catch up with technology, but noted that India’s approach to AI and the recently approved digital personal data protection law could be adopted as world standards.

“I think what the world is telling and some of the important leaders are saying is that what India is doing in the area of digital bill and privacy laws, the red lines around AI, could become the world standards to be adopted.

Did we make some mistakes on the journey; will we be able to correct some of the issues? I think it’s only obvious that some of the issues will keep on getting more calibrated as you go along, but for India to date, late in some of these advanced technologies, and regulating and directing in the right way is truly commendable,” he said.

Updated: 25 Aug 2023, 10:52 PM IST