Experts and Policymakers Offer Solutions to Macroeconomic Challenges at Global Business Summit 2022

The 7th edition of Global Business Summit (GBS) showcased the theme of ‘Revival of Economy and Business’ against the backdrop of a 2-year pandemic.

The GBS 2022 featured some of the most distinguished and top-notch speakers from around the world and various industrial and economic domains. The GBS is recognized for bringing the speakers who are forerunners, experts and policy makers, providing solutions to macroeconomic challenges, sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

The summit saw the participation of more than 50 speakers who delivered their ideas and shared in the two-day virtual summit to be held on March 11-12, 2022. The two days of the summit were full of enriching conversations on topics ranging from coping with the new normal to looking at disruptions shaping our future.

The summit started with a welcome speech by Vineet Jain, Managing Director, BCCL. In his address, Mr. Jain emphasized: “In a short span of seven years, the ET Global Business Summit has become South Asia’s premier meeting place for global opinion leaders. As we kept that as the guiding principle, we felt that now would be the right time to bring a diverse group of opinion leaders together on one platform to discuss and debate what experts would normally call the next.”

Mr. Jain’s speech was followed by the keynote address “Enabling Greater Prosperity through Free Trade Agreements” by Piyush Goyal, Minister of Trade and Industry, and Minister of Consumer Affairs and Food and Public Distribution and Textiles. “At this crucial moment in our economic history, a confident and self-sufficient India is emerging. We want to expand our engagement with the rest of the world. We want to do it from a strong position after almost a decade,” he said.

In addition to Piyush Goyal, Nitin Gadkari and Meenakshi Lekhi also discussed government policy initiatives to get the economy going again.

Dough McMillon, President & CEO of Walmart Inc., in conversation with Bodhisatva Ganguli, Executive Editor of The Economic Times, shared about the “new normal” and how organizations are adapting to it: “Building tech, making the investment, attracting talent to building technology is something we have been able to do, but really we all had to change our mindset to a way of working to design digital products differently, to work in a more agile way than before.”

Payments and currency have been the topic of conversation in the past year. In recent years, several blockchain-based cryptocurrencies have emerged all over the world. Crypto offers a fundamentally different way to reshape money and currency. Alfred R Kelly Jr, Chairman and CEO, Visa Inc. in a session with Arijit Barman, deputy editor-in-chief, The Economic Times, gave critical insights on the ‘Future of Money’.

“We see India as a market that has grown tremendously in payments over the past six years. But it is still in the early stages of a growth trajectory that I see happening in the next 10 to 20 years. And I think what we will see in India during this meeting in 2042 will be unrecognizable from where it is now by 2022,” Kelly said.

The 2nd day also had a session devoted to “Crypto” where Johnny Lyu, co-founder and CEO, KuCoin and Sachin Dave, senior editor, The Economic Times peeled off layers of ambiguity surrounding crypto.

Aside from digital currencies, India has seen the rise of fintech startups that offer a dramatically improved method of payment. The Digital Payments Roundtable, included industry professionals including Akhil Handa, CDO, Bank of Baroda, Ganesh Kumar, Former Executive Director, RBI, Noopur Chaturvedi, CEO, NBBL, Rahul Chari, Co-Founder and CTO, PhonePe and Saurabh Tripathi , MD and Senior Partner, BCG, who expressed and elaborated their knowledge and opinion on ‘Decoding the role of payment aggregators in enabling the adoption of digital payments’.

‘Setting the new Entertainment Agenda’ was full of new ideas about the future of entertainment as seen through the eyes of Siddharth Roy Kapur, Founder & MD, Roy Kapur Films and Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer, Netflix.

While Hinduja Group Co-Chairman Gopichand P. Hinduja gave answers on whether it is the right time to invest in India, the summit also had a mix of speakers deliberating on what the future of business will be like. Data will play a major role in the future of organizations and has become a recurring theme in CXO conversations. Not only the startups, but also established companies are looking at ways to build a sustainable future and a just society. Warren East CBE, Chief Executive, Rolls-Royce plc and Ashwin Yardi, CEO – India, Capgemini, shared their views on building a resilient and sustainable future.”

Other notable speakers included Evan Spiegel, CEO and Co-Founder of Snap Inc, Arjun Mohan, CEO upGrad, Vishal Bhola, MD, Whirlpool, Arvind Gupta, CEO, Digital India Foundation, Deepali Naair, Digital Sale India and ASEANZK, Bangalore, IBM , Nikhil Mathur, MD, India, Head of Data Partnership & Innovation, APAC, Roshni Das, Senior Marketing Director, APJ, Regional Marketing.

(Disclaimer: This article was created on behalf of TSSL by the Mediawire team)