Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday, 22 September called on Indian industry to move beyond mere business expansion and build enterprises that are innovative, resilient, well-governed, and globally competitive. Addressing an event organised by the All India Management Association (AIMA) in New Delhi, she argued that India's next growth chapter must be grounded in quality — and that means significantly scaling up corporate spending on research and development.

The 'Imagined in India' Vision

Sitharaman articulated a clear ambition for Indian industry: stop being a manufacturing destination and become an innovation origin. 'Our ambition must move from Made in India to Imagined in India — products not only manufactured here, but conceived, designed, and technologically developed here, and then taken to markets across the world,' she said. She urged corporates to raise R&D investment either through in-house units or through structured collaboration with academia, with the explicit goal of generating more intellectual property created in and from India.

India's R&D Spending: A Stark Gap

The Finance Minister cited sobering numbers to make her case. India's Gross Expenditure on R&D stands at just 0.83% of GDP — far below the OECD average of 2.7%, China's 2.6%, and the United States' 3.5%. Equally telling is the structure of that spending: India's private sector accounts for only 36% of total R&D outlay, compared with over 70% in leading advanced economies. This gap, Sitharaman observed, reflects a persistent shortfall in private-sector R&D depth that needs urgent correction if India is to compete at the technology frontier.

Management Education and Inclusive Growth

Beyond R&D, the Finance Minister stressed the need to redesign management education. She called for short, practical courses covering hiring, delegation, financial discipline, customer management, compliance, and systems-building — targeted at founders and early employees of growing firms. She also flagged the specific needs of family-owned businesses, urging practical programmes on succession planning, governance, professionalisation, conflict management, and delegation.

Sitharaman also pushed back against a narrowly urban, premium-focused growth model. 'India's consumption base rests on working families across agriculture, rural construction, transport, and informal enterprise. If corporate India pursues premiumisation for the urban tier alone, growth will lose its structural durability,' she warned, urging companies to design products and services for a far wider consumer base.

Corporate Governance and Industry-Government Relations

The Finance Minister used the platform to address corporate governance and the tone of business-government relations. She urged companies to strengthen internal governance mechanisms and to resist the reflex of seeking legal recourse at the first sign of disagreement with regulators. 'Every disagreement need not begin as litigation. There is considerable value in engaging early, placing evidence on the table, participating seriously in consultations and working towards solutions before differences become disputes,' she said. In turn, she acknowledged that a mature economy required businesses to offer predictability and transparency — and that the relationship should be capable of 'disagreement without immediately becoming adversarial.'

The Viksit Bharat Context

Sitharaman framed the entire address within the government's Viksit Bharat by 2047 roadmap, arguing that the quality of enterprises and institutions being built today would ultimately determine the country's trajectory. With India aiming to become a developed economy by its centenary of independence, the Finance Minister's message was direct: incremental growth is no longer enough — structural transformation in innovation capacity, governance, and inclusivity is the actual bar.