21st century belongs to India, says SoftBank’s Son

Masayoshi Son, chief executive officer of SoftBank, strongly believes that the 21st century belongs to India because Indian people are smart, they speak English, and the country has more percentage of young population.

According to him the 21st Century will see an information revolution bigger than the industrial revolution.

SoftBank has already invested over $2 billion in India in one year out of the promised $10 billion in 10  years and going forward would seriously accelerate further investments, said Son in an interaction with CNBC-TV18 at the Start-Ups India Movement in New Delhi.

On a lighter note, he said while investing in start-ups in India he mainly looks into the eyes of the entrepreneur to see whether they are sparkling, then the field he is operating in, the passion he has, what themes they are looking at, whether the business has a potential to grow, etc. Feelings and instincts too play a vital role in reaching an investment decision, he added.

''This is the beginning of the Big Bang in Indian Start-UP space,'' he said.

After five to ten years of starting the business the focus should be on customer satisfaction.

Speaking about the positives of investing in India, he said it is one of the few countries along with China that has a huge domestic market to fight challenges.

He is confident that over passage of time artificial intelligence would surpass human intelligence in many domains.

When asked what India should do to accelerate growth, he said there needs to be give maximum attention to infrastructure, mobile connectivity, electricity, etc.