Betting on India's Consumer: Ravi Lambah

Amid the geopolitical uncertainties in the world today, India stands out for its resilient growth. A confluence of factors is contributing to this, including consistent and credible fiscal and monetary policy, world-leading ~7% GDP growth, a broadening infrastructure footprint, sustainable capital formation, a strong banking system, digitisation across all sectors, fast-growing capital markets and a robust ecosystem of entrepreneurs. As the country advances toward its independence centenary, this trajectory looks increasingly promising.

Set to become the world’s fourth-largest economy in 2025, India has seen its consumption double to $2.8 trillion over the past decade, according to World Bank data. India’s large and diverse consumer base positions the economy for continued growth, across economic cycles. The consumer is aspirational, experiential, and ambitious.

A bold bet for a long-term investor would be to create a portfolio of assets that benefits from this consumer growth, and that is powered by urbanisation, physical and digital infrastructure, and domestic capital formation.

Investment performance and returns are strongly influenced by business owners and managers. India has a deep bench of both established family-owned firms and a new wave of businesses led by independent founders or members of industrialist families, who seek to create new pillars of growth.

Family-owned businesses have been a cornerstone of India’s economy, accounting for 79% of the country’s GDP—one of the highest percentages in the world. Many were not built overnight: they had modest beginnings, but grew over generations, strengthening their vision and capacity. With this multi-generational outlook, these businesses have stayed true to their core values and remained resilient through economic cycles, whilst building strong brands that foster customer trust and loyalty. Many have emerged as category leaders, demonstrating impressive track records and remarkable resilience across market cycles.

Temasek has formed partnerships with many family-owned businesses, including investments in Bharti Telecom, Godrej Consumer Products, Haldiram Snacks Food, Dr Agarwal’s Health Care, Manipal Health Enterprises and many others. Our global orientation enables us to add significant value through our extensive network, strategic expertise, and governance insights. These partnerships reflect a strong alignment to create value with strategies that are closely tied to forming a partnership of the family’s legacy and operational knowledge with our strategic and financial discipline.

Beyond family-owned businesses, innovative founder-led companies are catalysing transformative pathways for India’s growth. Initiatives like Digital India and Startup India have fostered a vibrant entrepreneurial community that introduces disruptive solutions addressing real-world problems at scale, serving the emerging and underserved needs of India’s vast domestic market.

At Temasek, we have deployed early capital in promising start-ups and journeyed with them from pre-IPO to listing as they took on market leadership. For example, Zomato has reshaped restaurant discovery and food ordering through a platform tailored to India’s diverse food-consuming landscape. Similarly, Policybazaar has enhanced insurance accessibility by simplifying complex offerings in an underpenetrated industry.

These companies demonstrated how founder-led companies can be uniquely positioned to respond to evolving consumer behaviours and demographic shifts, leverage technologies for scalability, and build new growth engines that are actively shaping India’s economic future.

The deep pool of entrepreneurial talent in India, combined with a policy environment that actively fosters innovation, has created a thriving start-up ecosystem—now the third-largest globally. India can harness its demographic dividend by leveraging artificial intelligence and exploring applications that make the digital economy more accessible to Tier-II+ consumers. The country’s long runway of growing affluence and consumption spend, coupled with proliferating digital fluency, establishes structural resilience and creates compounding opportunities that attract long-term investors.

We remain excited about opportunities to partner both family-owned businesses and founder-led companies. These two engines provide great complementarity as Temasek seeks to build a resilient portfolio that delivers sustainable returns from the consumption-led growth in India, over the long term.

Over the last year, Temasek has invested over $3 billion in India. Our India portfolio exposure now stands around $50 billion, and we continue to see abundant opportunities ahead. Going forward, we plan to deepen our investments in consumer, financial services, and healthcare sectors, responding to growing demand from the country’s rising middle-income population.

India’s position in the world economy will continue to strengthen in the coming years. By providing not just capital but also global expertise and networks, we aim to play a role to help build resilient and innovative Indian enterprises, with family owners and founders, that will drive the country’s next wave of growth towards 2047 and beyond.

 

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