Asked whether global poverty had fallen by half, doubled or remained the same in the past 20 years, only 5% of Americans answered correctly. That it had fallen by half. This is not simple ignorance. By guessing randomly, a chimpanzee would pick the right answer far more often.
Famines, earthquakes and beheadings all make gripping headlines; ''40 mn Planes Landed Safely Last Year'' does not. So, Economists and business journalists are often prone to be more pessimistic by nature. That's almost a prerequisite characteristic for them to have.
But, the reality is that one needs to also have an ear to the ground and listen to the people who actually matter and are in the thick of things.
So this is a small thread on what Mr Manish Sabharwal, founder of India's largest staffing company @TeamLease , had to say a couple of days back on CNBC, which coincidentally has less than 1000 views. Mr Sabharwal, in conversation with Latha, Nigel D'Souza and Sonia, verbatim.
"I'm not sure about Latha's worry about domestic consumption not being back. Domestic consumption might not be where it should be but all of our clients are doing anticipatory hiring"...
"The formalisation process, the labour law code notification, the degree apprenticeship deregulation, sometimes people don't realize how much of our growth is held back by regulatory cholesterol, all of which is going away now"...
"Interstate migrants which were 65 mn before the 1st lockdown which went down to 50 mn during the lockdown are back above 75 mn. So the Indian economy seems quite confident on the domestic consumption front."...
"IT is an oasis in terms of productivity and in terms of numbers and that is just remarkable. I don't think anyone is doubting that 5 mn IT employment is going to 10 mn. In IT, the demand is exploding so much so that the people supply chain has become constrained"...
"New Hiring is across the board, be it FMCG, manufacturing or IT. Some of it is pent up demand post-COVID some is from the long term trend of formalisation where the Mathew effect is playing out which is 'The Big is getting bigger"...
"COVID was only a passing shower, not climate change. Our view on the structural changes in the labour markets, the digitisation acceleration that has happened, is that confidence is at levels we've never seen before"...
"In IT It's a unique thing. 0.8% of the labour force produces 8% of the GDP and India will export more software this year than Saudi Arabia will Oil. The lagging part, that is of hospitality and entertainment is finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel"...
"We are a proxy to the formal side of the economy not the informal. So in some sense, I'm just the waiter in the restaurant and not the chef"...
On acquisitions: "It's been very hard for strategic listed companies to do deals in the technology business. $77bn of PE money came in last year. $27bn of it went to early-stage VC. So public mkts have a different way to value pvt technology companies"...
"So we've had a very difficult time in doing deals because of the way pvt mkts have been valuing these companies globally. Pvt markets, in the last 10 yrs, have raised more money than public mkts and that obviously impacts valuations and that impacts people like us to do M&A"...
"In my view, the opportunity in the next 5/10 years is nothing compared to what it was in the last 20 years. It's substantially larger because of structural forces like formalization, urbanization and industrialization"...
"Cos are realizing that growth isn't going to be in just 50/200 cities it's going to be in 5000 cities. We've now got employees in 5450 cities which is a long tail of demand. We have no doubt that the demand in the next 5 yrs is going to be much larger than our ability to serve."
Loading suggestions...