Indian firms really should have sufficient “reserves in the tank” to fight the deep-pocketed worldwide players crowding the industry, Deep Kalra, founder and group executive chairman, MakeMyTrip, stated on Wednesday.
Kalra stated that in contrast to some established economies like Europe that have implemented stringent guidelines about monopolistic business enterprise practices and privacy, India is however to concretise laws in that space and they are nevertheless “evolving”.
“….there is no denying the fact that India is an open economy. We have a regime where everyone’s here, everyone’s invited or not but everyone’s here. For a market (digital) which today is not that large.
That’s the scary part. I think it is going to be very hard for the local players who do not have the resources. Do not think that you can battle some of the large players coming in and if they get into your market, by just holding on to your old customers..no,” Kalra stated at the 15th India Digital Summit.
Kalra stated cash plays a large part as it enables players to be in the game for the lengthy haul. “We have all now seen so many battles in India which are getting a little saner right now… but with discounting and for that, you need not $100 million… you get into the billions of dollars,” Kalra stated.
Although there are important challenges, Kalra believes that Indian firms have a lot of prospective and it is very evident from the reality that neighborhood begin-ups alone garnered almost $10 billion in funding from investors in a pandemic year.
Kalra is hopeful that this decade will belong to India. “Fundamentally, there is a lot of capital available internationally and they are looking for good companies. I think India will be the beneficiary. We will probably in this decade not go from $2,000 to $6,000 per capita but my estimate would probably end at closer to $4,000 to $5,000 per capita which is huge,” Kalra stated.
To be far better equipped to deal with a crisis as large as Covid-19 in the future, Kalra advised companies to scale up with variable charges and not fixed charges. MakeMyTrip that had to let go of about 10% of its workforce has began considering “really hard” about each new recruitment. Kalra stated throughout excellent instances, firms begin expanding their workforce heavily but “we never realise that overnight, we may have to cut back on those very same people”.