Larry Fink, the chief executive officer of Blackrock Inc, suggested Indians should invest alongside the country’s economic growth, as the world’s largest asset manager taps Asia’s fastest growing wealth market in partnership with Mukesh Ambani-led Jio Financial Services.
“If you believe in the era of India, we need to compel hundreds of millions of Indians to invest alongside that growth,” Fink said in Mumbai on Wednesday, where he was joined by Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd.
Fink said that India’s rise will be fuelled both by foreign investors who believe in its potential and a strong local economy supported by retirement savings.
With more than $14 trillion in assets, BlackRock is expanding in India to tap into the growing mutual fund industry, as millions of savers enter the banking and financial services system. Assets managed by wealth firms in India are expected to rise to $2.3 trillion by 2029 from $1.1 trillion in 2024, according to Deloitte India.
“As more and more families invest alongside the growth of India, India has less need for the importation of capital,” Fink said.
BlackRock and Jio Financial have formed an equal joint venture JioBlackRock Asset Management, which has already one million customers and garnered ₹15,100 crore in assets as of December, according to public disclosures.
For BlackRock, the partnership marked a critical re-entry to fund management in the world’s most-populous nation after exiting in 2018.
Fink reiterated on Wednesday that he’s not worried about a bubble forming in artificial intelligence, pointing to the massive investment needed to develop the technology. He said that hundreds of billions of dollars spent building out the technology will ultimately boost global growth, even though there are bound to be some “big failures” from the technology.
Ambani echoed those views, calling AI hugely advantageous for India and urging people to embrace the technology.
“The world recognises India because the world also doesn’t have many such scale opportunities, where they can deploy on a few projects, hundreds of billions,” Ambani said. Reliance is approached by at least three or four global firms each month looking to partner, and while “we cannot say yes to everybody for partnerships”, it reflects the increasing focus on the country, he added.
Ambani said India could meet nearly 80 per cent of its energy requirements domestically over the next decade.
India stands as the third-largest consumer of crude oil after the US and China and currently meets over 80 per cent of its energy needs through imports.