Hon’ble Minister, what a great pleasure it is to receive this from you.
A minister who has seen my journey in some difficult moments as the telecom minister.
Most of you, my friends, colleagues from CII I had the pleasure to work closely with you.
All this is possible because of this kind of administration, and I have received this special honor amongst the many other awards I have received.
CII is a very special place, a place that works very closely with society, the entire stakeholders to build a policy value chain that takes our country forward.
From our family, actually, three of us, all three brothers, have had the privilege of doing national service through chambers. Rakesh is here. Rakesh has also been the CII president. Rajan went on the other side on FICCI and became the president there.But I personally feel that all of us in the industry also have a duty to serve from these very important positions of the chambers, whether it's certain segments of the industry, zones, geographies, or, of course, as the President of the CII. I would encourage most of my other younger budding businessmen, entrepreneurs to take responsibilities within CII because the government looks towards chambers, especially a chamber like CII, to work closely with them to guide their policy framework. 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% 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, creating a tremendous amount of pressure on the global economies, and India is no different in that aspect, and we can't escape the difficulties that the world is facing currently on economic terms.
His message yesterday was very profound. 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. 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 31,000 crores in capex. And if I include a subsidiary in the towers, there is another 7,000 crores. 2026, which we'll be announced in the next two or three days, the investment went up. 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. Thank you.