India’s remittances could reach over 4% of GDP by 2030: GATI Foundation founders Ashish Dhawan and Manish Sabharwal

India’s remittances could reach over 4% of GDP by 2030: GATI Foundation founders Ashish Dhawan and Manish Sabharwal

India can double its diaspora and remittances within the next few years, Manish Sabharwal and Ashish Dhawan told Moneycontrol in an interview at the launch of their joint initiative with Godrej Foundation called the Global Access to Talent from India (GATI) Foundation on May 6.

GATI is a non-profit foundation incubated by The Convergence, Manish Sabharwal and Godrej Foundation. The non-profit entity aims to set up India as a global talent pool hub.

“India already has a 17 million diaspora; it can go to 30 million and our remittances can go to $300 billion. India and China are the only country that can take a lead in this. But China has a trust and language problem,” said Manish Sabharwal, vice-chairman, TeamLease Services.

India’s remittances, at around $129 billion, were almost double that of the second largest country Mexico at $68 billion in 2024. India received remittances worth 3.3 percent of the GDP.

Dhawan notes that the country could easily increase that to 4-4.5 percent.

“Philippines has slightly higher GDP per capita than ours and its remittances are around 8.5 percent of the GDP. We won’t reach that level, but we can go from 3 to 4-4.5 percent,” said Ashish Dhawan, founder-CEO, The Convergence Foundation.

Middle income countries average remittances of around 2 percent of GDP, compared with 6 percent for low-income economies.

However, GATI founders noted that India could have an opportunity, especially in the blue collar worker space.

“Indians are seen as good workers. Given the demographic situation in many of the developed nations, economics of retail, hospitality, healthcare and construction are not going to work for them if they don’t have an infusion of labour force,” said Sabharwal.

GATI has mapped 20 skills in high demand and high value jobs that India can supply.

The organisation is looking at geographies where India has a low market share and are opening up. It’s targeting East Asian nations like Japan and South Korea and Germany for now.

Sabharwal cited the example of Japan, where there were just 30,000 Indians compared with 300,000 people from Nepali origin.

“We should be doing much more than 300,000,” he added.

Dhawan notes that East Asia can create about a 25-30 percent opportunity when it comes to attracting the global talent pool, minus the US, which has seen tensions simmer around the issue of immigration.

He further pointed out that the private sector would need to step up to provide a solution.

GATI is also looking to bring government to the table to ensure policy and standards and to create an incentive system with credit-guarantees and interest subvention, but Dhawan notes that the primary role needs to be played by the private sector.

“GATI is there to play the intermediary role of clearing that regulatory cholesterol,” Dhawan said.