Interview: BALJINDER SHARMA, entrepreneur and Investment Advisor at Launch Africa
By
Vishal Bhidu
Baljinder Sharma is the brain behind the India Africa Entrepreneurship Forum (IAEF) where the third edition was recently held on the island. The entrepreneur and Investment Advisor at Launch Africa wears many hats and is a passionate writer, opinion leader whose analytical views are often expressed in publications and social media. In this interview, he throws deep insights on both India and Africa, two continents with shared destiny cum prospects, offering a twinge of history on deep commonalities, finance, and the future of UPI seeing staggering growth in India as well as how Mauritius can benefit from the growth prospect on the continent. Baljinder Sharma is a huge believer in Africa as a continent and in this interview, he tells why and how sectors can grow in his view.
- The 3rd edition of the India-Africa Entrepreneurship Forum (IAEF) one of its kind was successfully held on 20-21 July. In the context of agreements such as CEPCA and AFCFTA, what are the key takeaways for the business community and policymakers to help bridge the gap in leveraging investment opportunities between India and Africa?
The various agreements in place, including CEPCA and a slew of multilateral signatories can help foster cross-border businesses, investment, and trade, among others. Nothing works without the entrepreneurial community. I think there is more and more that the policymakers, Government, and business community could do through concerted efforts to enable greater business activities. In my view, it is clear that such agreements can help where at the end of the day, business must be undertaken by entrepreneurs and the business community, as a whole.
2. As we speak about Africa’s prospect laden with rich resources, an increasingly young and active population, how can growth be steered in contributing trillion-dollar worth of investment coupled with five-fold growth to the global population?
There are many who even spoke about ‘India for Africa’. What I personally prefer is India-Africa because it’s a partnership of equals. There are many in the Western World and in China who see themselves as benefactors, perceiving the continent as a place that needs their money, generosity and technology as if nothing is happening within Africa.
As I speak particularly showcased through our event the India-Africa Entrepreneurship Forum where we conveyed what is going on in Africa, a continent with lots of innovation coupled with a slew of entrepreneurial activities taking place.
There is no doubt that Africa is rich in mineral resources and one reason why many Western countries, including China, are now interested to tap on the continent.
While there are unlimited resources coupled with all the talks about fintech and climate change, the strength of Africa in my opinion resides in its very young population who is very entrepreneurial, very dynamic armed with a hunger to do business.
We must understand that there is less in terms of what we call the formal industry in Africa and so people by the dearth of choice end up being very business minded where they have no option other than to fend for themselves.
I’ve been to Nigeria many times and love Nigerians who are very outgoing taking into account that their state has failed them which leaves them with no other choice than fend for themselves where they end up creating micro-businesses culminating into start-ups and large companies.
As we speak about Africa, there is for instance the West Africa and East Africa that has a very vibrant entrepreneurial eco-system and one of the things that we are trying to do through our platform as stated in our realm to bridge the gap by bringing these two communities of Indians and Africans together so that they learn form each other. It’s not just Africans learning from India and also Indians learning from Africa. I think that all these activities will obviously spur growth, innovation and investment.
3. According to analysts, both India and Africa are witnessing impressive growth over the years showcasing the mushrooming of start-ups and angel investors, for instance with USD 50T over the next three decades. How do you see a close partnership between both India and Africa, impacting growth and generating productive capacity, investment, and jobs?
One of the things that people don’t adequately recognize, emphasize, or are not even aware of is that Indians have been present in Africa for the last 700 years. As someone said, India-Africa was one continent where millions of years back, we had lots of commonalities. Indians established themselves and set up base in East Africa for many years as traders and merchants. So, they understand Africa very well as opposed to the Dutch, Portuguese, French, or British who have been there only in the 14th century. You can well imagine Indians who were in Africa some 300-400 years before the Western world would have even discovered the continent. You will see the Indian-origin communities who are all over East Africa running ports, shipping lines, and traders.
You may not be aware that even in Gujarat in the state of Junagadh in the Gir forest lives the community of Siddhis who are Africans brought by the King and originally hailing from Ethiopia where they speak Gujarati. We even have one Mallik Ambar who is of African descent, was a Mayan Military leader, ruler, and King serving as Peshwa and ruler of one Indian state, Ahmednagar Sultanate. We all have such a history.
To put into context, China took much longer to discover Africa probably because for the Chinese to reach Africa they had to pass entirely through the Indian coastlines where Indians were controlling the trade route. There are the South Indian Cholas, Cheras, and Pandyas guarding the Malacca trade routes where the Chinese could enter. Therefore, the Chinese couldn’t access Africa and the Middle East.
What I’m trying to say is that India-Africa has a long relationship going back to the very distant past and all that helps is that our platform is trying to revive such relationships by taking it back where they were historically.
4. India is playing a massive role where historical agreements were signed with the recent visit of PM Shri Narendra Modi to France and UAE coinciding with the likely implementation of the UPI as a key game changer while the BoM is working along the same line with Rupay’s implementation. How does such development help boost prospects and the potential role that India can play across the globe and the continent as a whole, with Mauritius posing as a strategic business conduit?
As we speak on the role that Mauritius can play as a business conduit, I believe that as we, Africa as a continent are now growing, the perception about a decline in prospect of the so-called DTAA preference that the jurisdiction faces is now being more than compensated by the continent’s rise. I think that the Mauritius offshore sector has started reaching out to some of these companies in Africa where we have seen it among start-ups with many FinTech companies mushrooming in the local jurisdiction. If we can improve the banking and regulatory aspects to make it slightly more modern and friendly, this could fuel business prospects on a much bigger scale.
On implementation of the Rupay and UPI, I think it’s important for us to go back in understanding how Aadhar in India has spawned what we call the India Stack which I described in a media article as an ever-expanding ecosystem of digital public goods and policies that has the potential to transform humanity. Had India Stack been a private company it would emerge as the globe’s largest and most coveted ahead of Amazon, WalMart, Apple, and Microsoft.
To get an idea of the mammoth role or simply put significant progress made by India over the years through its payment infrastructure in present times, the United Payments Interface (UPI) is a case in point where in 2009 only 17 percent held bank accounts to hit 80 percent in 2022 coupled with a billion DBT payments effected successfully in 2021. Here’s caviar, combine the volume of transactions in the US, UK, Germany and France to multiply by four across digital payments, you will get your answer.
5. The island holds a privileged relationship with India on several fronts where recently 75 years of diplomacy was celebrated. What does the future hold for such collaboration spanning across the financial services spectrum with Mauritius posing as a key enable for Indian investment foraying into the continent?
We have seen so far that Mauritius has posed itself as a channel for investment into India where more and more Indian corporates want to invest into Africa by resorting to the local route. In this context, the situation of the local jurisdiction is unlikely to change on account of massive investment made abroad while embarking on this path to reap the benefits of such an increase in activities is huge.
There is a big river flowing between India and Africa and Mauritius lies somewhere in between where the latter has to see what it wants and how it can benefit from it, percolating to taking a few buckets of water. Here we are speaking worth trillion dollars of investment. The figures are telling: India-Africa corridor boasts a staggering USD 50T along the Mauritius coast where the few buckets we spoke about could transform the latter into USD 11 billion economy to help it achieve its long-aspired dream to become the Singapore ($380 bn) of Africa.
Let’s put the figures into perspective of what India and Africa can become with the growing role of Mauritius as we speak about the African hinterland. Firstly, India’s working-age population is assessed at 900 million and is expected to usher into one billion in the next decade with its 8 self-ruled states through a concerted approach, irrespective of politics can collectively generate USD 3 trillion in terms of output. In this context, several analysts believe that both India and Africa can jointly achieve an economic output hovering around USD 50 trillion spanning over the next three decades.
On account of its sheer size, there is a need for people in Mauritius to be more aggressive and get more adventurous where the bottom line is to head out and increase the risk-taking appetite. The crux is to specialize. Africa is such a big continent where the focus should be either on East or South Africa, developing a deep understanding and relationship where it needs to happen in the way that it should.
There is a need to create awareness about the underlying opportunities, train people in getting them to specialize across the continent so that they can act as trusted advisors and intermediaries targeting Indian companies keen to get into Africa and the latter entering India.
In my personal view, if Mauritius is able to tap into the Indian diaspora in Africa which is huge where the bottom line is to entertain, understand and do business with them. Just imagine there is roughly 3-4 million Indians spread in Africa, including one million in Mauritius with 3 million spread mostly between Sub Saharan region spanning across Durban, Kenya, Nairobi, Uganda, Ethiopia where there is a need to harness relationships and build ties with them.
This is what we are striving to do through our platform and wherever we go, we take Indian businesses and entrepreneurs where the Indiaspora over there is keen to meet them.
6. The conference boasted several impressive names as its various and diverse keynote speakers, including the former Vice Chair at Niti Aayog Dr Rajiv Kumar. Can you share the history behind the event’s creation and how can the various deliberations and outcome help rethink strategies to shape the India-Africa relationships in the wake of several global uncertainties such as low-interest rates, post covid world, and of course digitization?
As you are aware, we started off by creating a WhatsApp Group with friends who were interested in both Africa and India till we decided to meet up in Mauritius for the first time in 2019. During the first IAEF, we discovered that there was a lot of interest garnered in India from Africans and from Indians in Africa.
Unfortunately, things came to a halt with the COVID-19 pandemic. I must say that the first event hosted in Mauritius saw 80 people attending while the second one took place in Nairobi, Kenya with a huge turnout of 200 plus in 2022. We were thinking to host the third edition either in Egypt or Kigali. It was then that the Economic Development Board (EDB) stepped in and persuaded us to conduct it here that we were quite happy to do cum glad to receive all the support from them. That’s how the third event was incepted here in July 2023.
We want to make it an annual summit in Mauritius and may be hosting some mini-events twice a year focussing on Africa that will more likely to be on the lines of B2B meetings emphasising emerging across areas such as Energy, Education, Health and Agriculture.
During the conference, one of the key takeaways is that Africa thinks that India has already met its development challenges and solved many of those issues. We can just share the solutions with our African brothers where we can have them leapfrog with knowledge sharing and awareness. We are happy that we are able to do that through such initiatives and create the desired impact.
