Hyderabad CEOs unveil top risks hindering India's economic growth

When business leaders from pharma, agriculture, energy, healthcare, manufacturing and law came together for the fourth roundtable discussion of the Mint Leadership Dialogues-Season 2 in Hyderabad, the opening question was deceptively simple: from an Indian economy perspective, what is the single biggest risk?

The answers, however, quickly revealed the depth and persistence of India’s structural challenges—and why many of them have proved stubbornly resistant to change despite decades of economic growth.

“Disparity in incomes,” said N. Balasubramanian, chief executive officer (CEO) of Sresta Natural Bioproducts, setting the tone for a conversation that repeatedly returned to the uneven distribution of growth, fragility of supply chains, climate change, weak skilling pipelines and the limits of policy-led solutions.

Sidharrth Shankar, partner at JSA Advocates & Solicitors, broadened the frame, pointing to risks well beyond India’s borders. “Environmental issues and political instability worldwide,” he said, adding that geopolitics increasingly shapes trade and growth outcomes. “A lot of these factors do play a role—trade and other things. Aspects of these will always have a very large impact on the overall growth pattern.”

Regulation, uncertainty, and a moving policy landscape

Regulatory change, often cited as both an enabler and a constraint, featured prominently. “Too many,” Shankar said when asked about regulatory shifts. He cited recent developments: “In November itself we’ve seen two very large changes. One is the whole data protection which has become live. And then we see the labour codes—29 legislations and laws which have been combined into four labor codes.”

While acknowledging that regulatory frameworks matter, he also emphasized the pace of change. “India is a dynamic country, in that sense of what’s going to happen next day you don’t know.”

From a pharmaceutical perspective, Raja Bhanu K., director-general of industry body Pharmexcil, highlighted both opportunity and vulnerability. “Drugs worldwide is almost like a $1.6 trillion business, and by 2030 it will be almost $2.4 trillion,” he said. Yet the Indian pharma market, he noted, remains heavily export-oriented. “The Indian pharma market is around $60 billion and more than half of it goes outside India.”

India’s historical reliance on the US market, he warned, has created concentration risk. “All these years we tried to put all the eggs in one basket—one-third was going to the US.” Regulatory pressures, he added, hit smaller firms hardest. “I think the MSMEs face the most challenges.”

Technology, capital, and infrastructure gaps

Mahesh Godi, founder and CEO of GODI NOVA India, framed risk through the lens of competitiveness. “Technology and R&D are the biggest risks,” he said, pointing to continued brain drain. “Access to capital is the other big risk. Free capital is available in western world and China but getting huge capital into the Indian ecosystem is quite challenging.”

Infrastructure, he argued, remains a binding constraint. “The third biggest problem is infrastructure.”

For Irfan Khan, chairman and CEO of EBG Group, the defining risk is environmental. “Carbon emission is the biggest risk in India,” he said, arguing that profitability alone cannot remain the sole focus. “Businesses are thinking more about generating profits and Ebitda.”

He called for stronger measurement and accountability. “The government should introduce a carbon calculator to assess, audit any business in terms of how much emissions they are doing.”

Income inequality and affordability pressures

The issue of income disparity resurfaced with greater urgency as the discussion turned to consumption and affordability. Madhivanan Balakrishnan, CEO of Apollo Health Co and chief digital and technology officer, Apollo Group, warned that inequality is widening even amid headline growth. “In spite of the growth that we’re showing, I think the disparity is continuously expanding and that’s a big worry.”

He linked this directly to affordability in essential sectors. “Healthcare is much more disheartening—very fragmented markets, prices going through the roof and, inflation will only make it worse.”

Balasubramanian returned to the same theme from a market-scaling perspective. “For businesses to scale, this income disparity—or a handful of people having money and the majority not having the means to afford—will create a big problem,” he said. “We are therefore not seeing too many brands able to scale to a global level.”

Private capex and the limits of the state

Masood Mallick, managing director and CEO of Re-Sustainability, shifted attention to investment cycles. “In the near term, the biggest challenge is private sector capex,” he said. “The government has practically run out of its bag of tricks.”

He argued that sustaining growth would require businesses to step in. “Private sector capex needs to come in and substitute the state capex and that is a story that’s yet to be written.”

Looking further ahead, Mallick expressed concern about employment. “I’m worried about job creation in a world where automation and AI will reduce availability of jobs,” he said, questioning how India will absorb millions of new graduates.

Supply chains and strategic dependence

Supply chain vulnerability emerged as one of the strongest points of convergence. Harshavardhana Gourineni, executive director of Amara Raja, described India’s dependence on imports as a systemic risk. “One of the largest risks the country is facing is around supply chain dependence,” he said, citing energy, specialty chemicals and advanced manufacturing inputs.

Referring to clean energy, he warned: “If we look at the new energy landscape, all roads at the moment lead to China.”

Diversification, he argued, must extend both upstream and downstream. “We need to diversify our trading partners,” he said, pointing to free trade agreements and the need to derisk energy imports.

Shankar agreed that supply chains cannot be separated from geopolitics. “The supply chain is always going to be a challenge,” he said, adding that India must “leverage on free trade agreements”.

Climate change and agriculture under stress

Nowhere were risks more tangible than in agriculture. Brahmani Nara, executive director of Heritage Foods, linked supply chain disruption directly to climate change. “Estimates show us that supply chain related disruptions because of climate change have lost us about $3.3 trillion in agri economies globally in the last three decades,” she said.

She described how unpredictability is affecting farmers. “Q1 of this year itself in India we’ve seen with untimely unseasonal rains and colder weather conditions, how that impacted consumption and as a result how that impacted farmers at the farm level.”

Balasubramanian highlighted long-standing inefficiencies. “Everyone talks about 30% whatever wastage in our entire agri production system,” he said. “But no one has measured it.”

He recalled decades-old examples that still repeat today. “There are scenes where farmers have thrown tomatoes in the field… This was in the 1980s and ’90s, and 5 years back I was in Rajasthan.”

Organic farming, he added, is even more constrained. “If I have floods in Maharashtra in the place where I'm growing my pulses, I don’t have a choice.”

Mallick offered a stark illustration of irreversible change. “The issue of the mango belt and its shift because of climate change,” he said, noting that changing weather patterns have altered long-established growing regions.

Gourineni, whose company operates a mango processing unit, confirmed the impact. “Seasons are getting shorter, unseasonal rains… there’s no consistency,” he said.

Jobs, AI, and skilling gaps

When asked whether India’s problems have remained the same over decades, Mallick argued they have evolved. “The problems have shifted,” he said, pointing to automation and driverless technology.

Shankar countered that India’s demographic reality is different. “We are dealing with a very large population,” he said. “Maybe the situation will really not come in because we’re dealing with a very large population which can continue to do a lot of things.”

Balakrishnan reframed the issue as underemployment. “We don’t have an unemployment issue. Maybe we are having an underemployment issue,” he said, citing logistics and quick commerce as large employment generators.

Nara of Heritage Foods emphasized skilling shortages at the grassroots. “We find it so difficult to find veterinarians at the village level,” she said, noting that most trained professionals are absorbed by government institutions.

Raja Bhanu K echoed this concern in pharma. “They have theoretical knowledge but industry readiness is important,” he said.

Godi was more blunt. “The fundamental problem is the skill set,” he said, adding that both high-end and low-end skills suffer from gaps in discipline, accountability and relevance.

Circularity, enforcement, and opportunity

Amid the risks, Mallick highlighted opportunities in sustainability and circularity. “A pollutant… is actually a resource,” he said, describing waste-to-energy and recycling as massive job creators.

Yet he identified a single binding constraint. “We don’t need any more regulations,” he said. “There should be enforcement.”

Shankar acknowledged progress in governance standards. “The corporate governance thresholds have really gone up,” he said, while calling for faster enforcement mechanisms.

Innovation and trust deficits

Toward the end, the discussion returned to a deeper concern: India’s inability to build globally trusted brands. “The whole issue for me is of trust,” Balasubramanian said. “We literally don’t have a single brand from India which is able to globally create a market.”

Raja Bhanu K urged a shift toward innovation. “We can’t lose the opportunity to get ourselves into the innovation space,” he said, pointing to biosimilars and complex generics.

Asked how India can foster innovation, Gourineni stressed stronger links between startups and corporates. “That ecosystem has to be extended,” he said.

Balakrishnan closed on a cautious note of optimism. “India has got all the ingredients very nicely,” he said, arguing that constraints can force innovation. “UPI what we built in India… today we’re taking it to Brazil, we’re taking it to other countries.”

The challenges, the roundtable made clear, are neither new nor simple. But as India’s ambitions grow, so too does the cost of not resolving them.