NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that the Indian economy is expanding close to 8%, while global growth has slowed below 3%, prompting the world to re-rate India.Addressing an AIMA event, she called for not just building bigger Indian companies, but better companies that are competitive, innovative, trusted and resilient to lead India into the future.In her address, FM underlined the need to help startups and MSMEs deal with succession planning, governance, conflict management and delegation, while calling for Indian business models.“A large share of India’s MSMEs and mid-sized enterprises are family owned. Many have strong products, loyal customers and significant growth potential, but expansion can be held back by unclear roles, succession disputes, informal decision making and disagreements within the family,” said Sitharaman.
Professionalisation key to separating ownership from management, says Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman
She said the challenge is often not entrepreneurship, but institutionalisation and this can be achieved by overhauling management curricula for today’s techno-economic realities. “We need professionalisation: separating ownership from management, defining responsibilities, preparing the next generation, and resolving conflicts before they affect the business itself.”Sitharaman highlighted that over the next two decades, the challenge is not simply to keep creating more startups, it is to see how many of them can become large, professionally managed and enduring corporations. “AIMA can make these enterprises make the difficult transition from founder-led ventures to institution-led companies – without losing the entrepreneurial energy that created them in the first place,” said Sitharaman.She also emphasised that sound corporate governance is not simply a set of external codes to be adopted, as it depends on the standards institutions set for themselves.“Businesses must engage constructively with govt and regulators. Legal recourse will always remain available, but every disagreement need not begin as litigation. There is considerable value in engaging early, placing evidence on the table, participating seriously in consultations and working towards solutions before differences become disputes,” she noted.She also said Indian industry needs to build institutions that combine scale with durability, higher quality, better governance and deeper technological capabilities.
