India is poised to overtake Germany to become the fourth largest economy by the end of this year or early next year, Invest India Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Deepak Bagla said.

From 2015 until now, India has moved ahead of Brazil, UK, Russia, Italy and France in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). India is the fifth largest economy by GDP.

“We are now knocking at Germany for the fourth position. Before the pandemic, India was the fastest-growing large economy. After the pandemic, India is the fastest-growing large economy. The story has just begun,” Bagla said at an event.

India's GDP is currently estimated at $3.5 trillion. Bagla said it took the country 67 years to reach the first trillion and eight years to reach the second trillion. It added a third trillion to its GDP in just the last five years.

Two-thirds of India's GDP is driven by domestic demand. Demand is ahead of supply and market forces are driving it, he said.

India is going through the most unprecedented transformation in history at an experimental scale and pace in all social, economic and political spheres while remaining the fastest-growing economy before as well as after the pandemic, Bagla said.

Invest India is a team of 450 professionals aged an average of 29 years, who come from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) with backgrounds in banking and finance, Bagla said at the event. It is an investment promotion facilitation agency that helps investors looking for opportunities in India.

“The team at Invest India has taken up to 93 percent pay cut to build a new India,” he said.

FDI inflows

India has received a total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of $950 billion since 1947, out of which $532 billion has come in the past 90 months from 162 countries, a global record. For the last eight consecutive years, India has set a new record in FDI every year.

During 2022, amid the lockdown, India received $83.5 billion, its highest FDI ever. Ninety-three percent of the FDI came through the open route. India remains one of the most open economies ever globally.

“The FDI received is across 61 sectors in 31 states and union territories which is again a global record. The new growth of India is inclusive, bottom up in every small town,” he said.

Digital transformation

India, with a population of 1.4 billion, will be the youngest nation until 2070, which will propel the engine of growth.

“This is the size of India's market. In 2019, there were 960 million plus registered voters of which 650 million cast votes. Ninety million were first-time voters,” Bagla said.

As far as per capita data consumption goes, India surpassed the US and China in 2022.

In 2022, 41 percent of the world's real-time digital transactions happened in India. India had the largest number of transactions at 48 billion and China was second with 18 billion transactions.

In Oct 2022 alone, 8.4 billion transactions took place, which shows the scale at which the digital transformation is happening, Bagla said.

Since 2016, when Startup India was launched, India has become the third globally in the number of unicorns, second in the number of startups and is at the top position in the number of new startups added every day.