India's growth story shifting to infra from IT, says Jefferies

The firm expects wealth creation to shift decisively towards 'hard assets' over the next decade

- Sakshi Sadashiv & Abhishek Mukherjee

Jefferies' country head of India Aashish Agarwal said the country is at the cusp of an infrastructure upgrade.

For global investors, India has long been defined by software services and outsourcing—the country’s signature growth engine since the late 1990s. Jefferies believes that story is giving way to a new one. Over the next decade, the firm expects wealth creation to shift decisively towards “hard assets”—airports, ports, hospitals, homes, hotels, real estate and renewables, as India pours capital into building its infrastructure backbone.

“The one thing that India was missing, and that every investor has always pointed out, is infrastructure,” said Aashish Agarwal, country head of India at Jefferies, in a conversation with Mint. “I think we ‘re now at the cusp of infrastructure upgrade. So, what services have been for the past 20 years, I think hard assets will be for the next 10 to 15 years for institutional investors.”