New Delhi: India has emerged as the second most promising market after China in terms of maximum opportunity for rapid growth among emerging market economies, says a survey.
According to the survey by Tata Communications in association with research company Vanson Bourne, more than half of the respondents believe China offers the maximum opportunity for rapid growth opportunities, followed by India at 46 percent and Brazil at 26 percent.
Russia comes a distant eighth with just 11 percent of emerging market business leaders feeling it offers rapid business growth, according to the survey covering 1,600 business leaders from ten emerging and developed markets.
Going ahead, 39 percent of all global respondents stated that their organisation is looking at expanding into India, making it the second most favoured market for global expansion after China at 51 percent.
Thirty three percent identified Brazil as a likely target market and 19 percent selected Russia.
Furthermore, China led the pack of FTSE Emerging Market Index countries considered to be most progressive, as 42 percent of respondents from China, India, South Africa and the Middle East selected China.
This compares with 27 percent who selected India and just 1 percent who indicated that they believed Russia to be most progressive.
Signalling the growing influence of developing markets in the global economy, as many as 85 percent of business leaders in India look to other emerging markets for growth and plan to increase their investments there in the near future.
Notwithstanding the political uncertainty, 87 percent of business leaders from both developed and developing markets (China, India, South Africa, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Middle East, the USA and the UK) are actively engaging in emerging markets, the study said.
As many as 61 percent of Indian companies are currently looking at operating in emerging markets, while 55 percent of Singaporean respondents, 45 percent of Middle Eastern and 40 percent of South African businesses have already set up operations in emerging markets.
"For companies to capitalise on that potential we need to see greater levels of investment in the infrastructure that is essential to support it. That will inevitably require more focus on developing talent and innovative thinking in markets that can have less educational investment in those areas," Tata Communications MD and CEO Vinod Kumar said.
Interestingly, 75 percent of Indian respondents selected India as the market they felt offered most rapid growth opportunities and Indian companies expect to increase their investment in emerging markets, including India, by 39 percent in the next year.
