Anil Gupta

In the early 1990s, China was a relatively small economy which had just built its very first highway. Mobile phones were a luxury purchased mainly by rich Europeans. And, social media meant walking over to your neighbor to borrow his/her newspaper. How the world has changed over the last twenty years. Look ahead to 2025. Notwithstanding how much change we have witnessed in recent years, it’s a certainty that the quantum of change over the next ten years will be even greater than over the last twenty. In this talk, Professor Gupta discusses the six megatrends that will drive this transformation:

Restructuring of the global economy;
- Growing volatility and risks;
- Divergent demographics;
- Digitization of everything;
- Global warming and environmental crunch; and
- Rise of the empowered individual.

The collective impact of these global game changers will be such that the structure and dynamics of the world’s economy, politics, and culture in 2025 will be fundamentally different from what they are today. Professor Gupta also discusses what these megatrends mean for countries, companies, investors and individuals in terms of who can expect to thrive in the new era.

Ever since Goldman Sachs’ prescient report “Dreaming with BRICs” over a decade ago, emerging markets have been on a ride. From 2000 to 2012, emerging markets’ GDP grew at an average annual rate of 6 percent, over three times the pace of the below 2 percent annual growth for the developed markets. As a direct result, emerging markets’ share of the global economy doubled from 17 percent in 2000 to 32 percent in 2012. Never before in the history of the world, has 80 percent of the world’s population become better off at the pace that it has since the turn of the 21st century.

Notwithstanding this glorious ride, it is clear that, since early 2013, the bloom has fallen off the emerging markets. China is undergoing a structural slowdown from an above 10 percent growth rate to around 6-7 percent. India has gone from 9 percent to around 5 percent. Economic growth in Brazil and Russia is hovering around one percent. Many other markets such as Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey and South Africa also appear to be mired in significant turmoil. These developments raise one of the most important questions facing every enterprise and every investor – Is the emerging market story over?

In this talk, Professor Gupta addresses this question head on. His central message is that the days of emerging markets moving up in tandem are indeed over. China is unlikely to remain the driver of a worldwide commodity boom. Similarly, the U.S. is unlikely to remain the font of easy money for much of the world. From here on, only those emerging markets that are able to undertake much needed internal reforms (stable governments, investment in infrastructure and education, and institutions that are efficient as well as responsive to citizens’ needs) can hope to thrive. Others run a serious risk of being trapped at their current low- or middle-income status for a very long time. Professor Gupta also shares his analysis of which countries appear to be better bets than others and what these developments mean for companies and investors.

Asia’s rise will be one of the defining game changers for the global economy in the 21st century. Asia today accounts for about a third of the world’s GDP as compared with about a quarter each for North America and Europe. Since Asia continues to grow faster than each of the other two continents, it is almost certain that, by 2025, Asia’s GDP will be larger than that of the US and Europe combined. Further, Asia’s impact on the global economy is multidimensional – as a mega-market, as the world’s factory, as a rising hub for global R&D, as a source of capital, and as the springboard for the rise of new global champions. Asia is also becoming more “Asian” in that intra-Asia trade is growing faster than Asia’s trade with the rest of the world. This talk will examine the forces propelling Asia’s rise and discuss a number of related questions including:

- What are the risks? What could derail Asia’s rise?
- What are the implications of China’s slowdown for corporations and investors?
- What lies ahead for India and Indonesia, the two largest Asian emerging economies after China?
- How should MNCs prepare themselves to benefit from Asia’s rise?
- Implications for investors? And, for young managers?