India offers a huge business potential, says Buffett

Bangalore: For a man who does not like to look back in life, India, though a missed opportunity, still offers a huge potential. For Mr Warren E. Buffett, Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway, India is a country which is on the move.

In what could be indicative of possible investments from the octogenarian-billionaire, he told a gathering of top-notch corporate leaders that Berkshire Hathaway was always available for big-ticket investments. “At some point in the next six months or two years or five years, when some large Indian corporation looks for a permanent new home, and believes that Berkshire Hathaway is the best place in the world,” it is important “they don't forget me”, emphasised Mr Buffett, addressing an interactive session organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Mr Buffet who is visiting India for the first time, said, “India is a very big country with large number of very significant businesses. There should be all kinds of opportunities for many of the Berkshire companies to participate in India.” In fact, in the last 48 hours he has even openly admitted of being a late entrant to India, indicating that there could have been missed opportunities.

Not willing to miss out on the country's potential in the future, Mr Buffett fielded questions from corporate leaders like Mr S. Gopalakrishnan, CEO and Managing Director, Infosys Technologies; Mr Vikram Kirloskar, Vice-Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar; Mr Raju, Managing Director, GMR Infrastructure, even as he urged them to pledge for philanthropy.

On the prospects for India and China, Mr Buffett said that both these countries were now working smarter and exploding in terms of opening up human potential. “It's not as if these countries are working harder than before, just that they are working smarter and responding to the needs of their societies,” he added.

Mr Buffett told the attentive and visibly excited audience that he was enormously lucky as a person, “with the right sort of wiring” that worked really well in a capitalistic society like the US, which was a “wonderful place to be born in”. He said that he got the right opportunities in life, better compared with his two sisters', and exposed as he was to “extraordinary human beings”.

“Personally I would much prefer not to be born rich,” he said but would like to be born with ‘certain talents' which are useful to the society so that he could lead a good life.

“Never have my heroes let me down,” he said, adding that his father and his first wife were his biggest influences in life.