"India did some things very well, other nations envy that": Bill Gates

The world unites at Global Business Summit

The COVID-19 pandemic is compelling us to look at unprecedented social, economic, and business responses in the here and now, but also the long-term landscape on all three fronts. The question remains; what will “normal” resemble in the wake of this Black Swan event?

As a tsunami of disruptions inundates global economies, The Economic Times Global Business Summit (GBS), South Asia’s pre-eminent knowledge platform, brought together the veritable who’s who of Global Inc. in order to rewire our understanding of a world in flux. Leaders as varied as Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, Brian Chesky, Ted Sarandos, Bill Winters, and Carla Harris pooled their collective wisdom and outlined new-age growth imperatives for us all.

Legendary tech mogul Bill Gates, who inspires by way of his philantrophy done in his capacity as Co- Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, expressed optimism to have a vaccine by early next year on a large scale and at a low cost, and highlighted India’s silver linings too. “India did some things very well. The ability to use the digital transfer system to get money to households, including to women who had problems, that infrastructure proved to be quite valuable, and other countries envy that.”

Gates also underlined to need to do more in order to achieve primary healthcare objectives, which have been set back by the pandemic. “I don’t feel, that we highlight that we’re going to have to put resources in there and catch up on those vaccines. I’m hopeful that in a couple years, if we do things right, we’ll get back on that positive track that we were on at the beginning of this year.”

Media mogul Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global, expounded on the need to balance technological solutions with a human touch. “If your employees are stressed out, then your productivity will go down even if you have the best tech solutions on offer. The bigger problem is the anxiety that comes from uncertainty. Nobody knows when the pandemic will end. This often triggers a fight or flight response in people. We have launched an app at Thrive Global to help deal with stress in a step by step process.”

Global giant Warburg Pincus' co-chief executive officer Charles Kaye said he sees a big role being played by the private equity industry in fuelling the growth of the future champions in India, but cautioned against celebrating too soon. “If I compare the India of 1995 and today, it’s remarkable. India’s principle challenge remains completing the reform vision and underneath it all the principle challenges about growth. India has all the powerful tailwinds in demography and so much else, but

that’s not destiny, it’s not pre-ordained, it requires continued vigilance and significant action to continue to take advantage of that opportunity.”

Even amidst the pandemic, the world turns to entertainment, and as Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO and the Chief Content Officer of Netflix revealed, Indians watch more films than any other audience in the world with Netflix's subscriber base in the country streaming at least one film per week. "We have said from the beginning that India was a critical market globally for us and for most industries, especially the entertainment industry. The Indian market is such a lover of great cinema, great storytelling and increasingly great television. We are heavily invested in growing our regional programming from India. But more importantly we are not just growing those stories for India but for a global platform so that people around the world are enjoying these stories that earlier did not travel well except for key markets."

Leading through this crisis has been anything but plain sailing, and Brian Chesky, Co-founder and CEO, Airbnb, opened up about the challenges before leaders in this uncertain landscape. “I think people in companies, they expect their leaders to have to make hard decisions, but they want to know that they will do that with compassion and heart. I think the problem is that sometimes, corporate processes do not have the heart as the people themselves, and sometimes they take a playbook and they kind of put it on auto-pilot and we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to do that as personally as one could during a pandemic.”

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, renowned Economics professor, bestselling author, and innovative educator, looked closer to home and took a dim view of the status quo, saying, “In my opinion, Donald Trump is the worst President in American history. He politicised wearing face masks, and made it seem as if it was an infringement of freedom.”

As the world battles a slowing economy, GBS assembled a power-packed lineup of global business leaders to reflect on the past, challenge the present and put forward paradigm-changing ideas as the sought to kick-start the engine of global economic growth.

Disclaimer: Content Produced by ET Edge