Geographies in Depth

From breaking siloes to driving growth: what to know on India at Davos 2025

At Davos 2025, discussions about India's economic future centered on its ability to sustain growth amid global uncertainties.

At Davos 2025, discussions about India's economic future centered on its ability to sustain growth amid global uncertainties. Image: World Economic Forum

Pooja Chhabria
Digital Editor, Public Engagement, World Economic Forum
This article is part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
  • At Davos 2025, leaders discussed how India can maintain its growth momentum while tackling challenges such as job creation and trade expansion.
  • The bright spots include expanding digital transformation in healthcare and growth expansion beyond the major cities.
  • The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2025 took place in Davos, Switzerland from 20th to 24th January, under the theme Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.

At Davos 2025, discussions about India's economic future centered on its ability to sustain growth amid global uncertainties and rising geopolitical tensions.

After a ‘temporary slowdown’, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) maintains a 6.5% growth forecast for the year ahead, with Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath noting that the world's most populous nation could make further gains by lowering tariffs and deepening integration with global supply chains.

"We're growing at 6.5%... But that's not enough for us to manage 1.5 billion people's aspirations. We have to grow at seven and a half, 8%,” said Sanjiv Bajaj, Chairman of Bajaj Finserv.

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India continues to expand its global role, building on its recent leadership of the G20 and position within the expanded BRICS bloc. Speaking at Davos, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signalled strengthened EU-India ties, announcing her first trip with the new commission would be to India "to upgrade the strategic partnership with the largest country and democracy in the world."

Leaders at Davos emphasized key priority areas for India's next phase of growth: from prioritising services and service-led manufacturing to leveraging the demographic dividend by investing in people.

Here are five key themes that emerged from India's participation at Davos 2025:

Going beyond low-skilled manufacturing

The debate over India's economic future has moved beyond the simple manufacturing versus services binaries.

“It has to be manufacturing and services combined. It cannot be ‘either’, ‘or’ - it has to be ‘and’,” said Minister of Railways and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw during a discussion on India's Economic Blueprint.

He presented India's economic strategy as being built on "four pillars: public investment in social, physical and digital infrastructure; focus on technology, manufacturing and innovation; inclusive growth; and simplification."

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In an interview with the Forum, Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan made a case for moving beyond low-skilled manufacturing through the lens of the "smile curve" - where value creation during the production of a product peaks at the beginning (design, R&D) and end (marketing, services), while manufacturing itself generates less value.

He offers the example of a phone’s value chain: while the company that designs, markets, and runs the app ecosystem is worth more, the manufacturer that assembles every device doesn’t retain the same value. This lays out the challenge for India: how to capture more value by combining manufacturing capability with high-value services at both ends of the chain.

"It's very hard today, given the kind of protectionism that is arising around the world, to be another China," Rajan argued. "India needs to be another China because it has the same population as China. Now, the key question is, should India try to do manufacturing just like every other East Asian country did, or truly try something different?"

He lays out a path focusing on exporting services and service-led manufacturing to create jobs and bring a leading edge to the Indian economy.

Tackling the structural challenges of gender parity

The personal journey of Asma Khan, a renowned chef and restaurateur who grew up as a "second daughter" in traditional India, illuminates the broader struggles faced by women in the country: "I was always made to feel I didn't count... It didn't help that I was dark-skinned and fat. I think that in India, at that time, was an issue," she said during a session on Defying the Odds.

“People don't speak about it. Girls don't speak about it. But there is always that feeling that you're not the chosen one, that you're not the special one. And the scars never go.”

In another session, Amitabh Behar, Executive Director of Oxfam International, provided stark statistics: "In India at the moment, the child sex ratio for the 0 to 6 age group is 917 girls for 1000 boys... For every 2000 children, almost 40 girls are missing. They're not being allowed to be born."

Several such factors, from family attitudes to security in the workplace, are creating a situation where “we don’t have enough women workers”, says Raghuram Rajan. “Attitudes have to change.”

With a population of over 1.4 billion, India has closed 64.1% of its gender gap, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2024.

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Skilling and reaping the demographic dividend

India’s often celebrated demographic dividend could become a challenge without adequate job creation and skilling infrastructure.

About 20-24 million young people join the workforce annually, and 2.5 to 3 million receive training in our long-term programs, said Jayant Chaudhary, Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, acknowledging, "It is still nothing".

He emphasizes the ability of developing countries to leapfrog using technology. "So my task now is to use convergence, use a whole of government approach, to break those silos."

Technological development, including the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, is reshaping the global labour market, finds the Future of Jobs Report 2025. Demand for AI skills has accelerated globally, and India is among the countries leading in enrolment numbers, with corporate sponsorship playing a significant role in boosting GenAI training uptake.

"In AI, we have set targets that at least 1 million people should be ready with AI tools, AI skills," says IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, noting that India currently generates "about 1.5 million formal jobs a month."

Sanjiv Bajaj of Bajaj Finserv says time is of the essence: "We can't wait five years… if we get them (the workforce) ready, they are a huge talent. We can explode on services for domestic [markets] and exports.

India's key barriers for business transformation.
Transformation for Indian organizations is most dependent on tackling skills gaps. Image: World Economic Forum

But the approach to skilling needs rethinking, argues former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan. "The most effective way of ensuring that people have jobs is to make them have adaptable human capital... In a world where we don't know what the technology will be, that seems the safest thing to do."

This requires fundamental reforms in education, healthcare and governance. “When people look at India from the outside, they see Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella. Those guys are the most successful, and there is a vast bunch of Indians by any standard who are successful, but they are still in the millions.”

“India's population is in the billions. So we need to bring that growth and capability to so many more Indians, which requires a lot more work.”

He also talks about decentralisation and strengthening local governance to see tangible improvements in education quality and infrastructure.

The startup revolution and expansion beyond big cities

"Today, India is perhaps the world's third largest start-up ecosystem," said Mohit Bhatnagar of Peak XV Partners. "In 2011, we probably had one company that crossed $2 billion in valuation. Today, India has about 110 of these companies."

Arvind Jain, CEO of Glean, reflected on the evolution: "When I went there to start Google India in 2005, the industry was largely a services industry... It's night and day when you think about what has happened in the last two decades."

Bengaluru-based entrepreneur and investor Nikhil Kamath echoes similar views on the city. “We did not have the startup culture you see today - there were no VCs (venture capitalists), [and] there were very few resources available.”

His WTFund empowers entreprenuers under 25 and has witnessed the growth of social impact startups beyond the major cities. “So what we are doing today, in terms of helping young entrepreneurs, is providing the initial funding, the network and the information they need to start. It’s relevant to me because it would have helped me a lot back in the day when I was younger if I had it.”

Shobana Kamineni, Executive Chairperson of Apollo Health, views this growth expansion beyond the metros as ‘the big India story’. “It's not concentrated in Delhi. It's about the states, it’s about the hundreds of cities that are coming up now.”

“This is the excitement. The compounding factor of India is something that no one else in the world can match. And that too, with the stability.”

Leveraging digital innovation in healthcare

Healthcare emerged as a key sector showcasing India's digital transformation.

Shobana Kamineni of Apollo Health, pointed out India’s spending on healthcare has gone from 1 to 2 per cent, which is “a big shift for a developing country”. And digital health technologies such as AI-powered diagnostics address critical challenges and expand access to care, particularly in remote and underserved regions.

She highlights the role of partnerships in bringing effective healthcare to the vast, diverse population, such as the one with the Edison Alliance to bring telemedicine to the farthest reaches of Himachal Pradesh, one of India’s northernmost states. “Women who didn’t want to go to a healthcare centre would come in digitally.”

Among other benefits, models proven in India can be adapted for other regions, especially low- and middle-income countries facing similar healthcare challenges.

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