Mittal was conferred the CII President’s Award for Lifetime Achievement, recognising his enduring leadership, contribution to India’s economic progress and commitment towards nation-building.
“I will just take one more moment to echo what our Prime Minister mentioned yesterday. These are difficult times. We, as a country, have been moving at a fantastic speed, growing at 6–7 per cent year over year. Generally, things are looking very, very good. But there are situations that develop which are beyond anybody’s control. And the current problem in the Middle East that we are all facing is creating a tremendous amount of pressure on the global economies and India is no different in that aspec, and we can’t escape the difficulties that the world is facing currently on economic terms,” Mittal said in his speech.
Prime Minister’s message yesterday was very profound, he noted.
“I think we in the industry need to play our role. We need to play our part. We have employment of millions of people. We can take his message forward in a very deep and meaningful way. We need to get away from this obsession of import of gold. We need to lower our energy costs. We need to move more faster towards renewable energy in our industry,” Mittal said.
“And importantly, we need to vote with our feet within our country. Spend more here, put more capex here. My own company, Airtel, in 2024–2025, spent about Rs 31,000 crore in capex. And if I include a subsidiary in the towers, there is another Rs 7,000 crore,” he said.
“And we know that in the current year, the investment will keep on going up. We need to invest more. This is not the moment to shy away. This is the moment to invest, double down in our own country, because the underlying growth is there. This is a continent of consumers, large, young population wanting more products and more services. And let’s give them more from India, make in India, from India, serving India,” he added.
