Ambani: Gaming next gamechanger, to be bigger than music, movies, TV shows’

With mobile networks better or at par with anywhere else in the world, India has an opportunity to become a 'premier digital society', billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Monday as he saw the country becoming the third world's largest economy within the next decade.

Speaking at a fireside chat with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the richest Indian saw gaming as the next big gamechanger as it will be bigger than music, movies and TV shows all put together.

He said technology presents an opportunity to transform India.

"We in India have the opportunity to become the premier digital society," he stated. "The next generation will see a very different India than what you (Nadella) and I have grown up in."

He said the big change driving this transformation was the deepening of mobile networks which were working at a much faster pace than before.

"I can easily say that the mobile networks in India now are better or at par with anywhere else in the world," he said. "The opportunity that we have for India, really, is the opportunity to become the premier digital society in the world."

India, he said, has all the components in place to "grow and march forward". "I have no doubt in my mind that we will become among the top three economies in the world," he said. "We can argue about whether it will happen in 5 years or 10 years but it's going to happen, and we will be in the top three economies in the world."

When that happens, he wondered: "Will we be the most technologically enabled society? Will we be having all our development enabled by all the tools of technology? Can we really be a pacesetter in terms of using all technology?"

When Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992, the Indian economy was USD 300 billion. "Today, India is USD 3 trillion," said Ambani, Chairman of Reliance

Industries. "And fundamentally, this whole progress, in a certain way, has happened on the back of technology."

Referring to Donald Trump's visit, he said the US President will see "in 2020 a very different from the India that neither President Carter saw nor (President) Bill Clinton saw or even Barak Obama."

Millions who came on the street to welcome Trump have their own personal experience of strong enough networks on their mobile phones, he said adding the construction of the world's biggest cricket stadium is an example of infrastructure being created. "The stadium in terms of digital is better than any other place in the world," he said.

Ambani said Reliance was founded by his father Dhirubhai as a start-up five decades ago with just a table and a chair and Rs 1,000 in capital. It rose to first become a micro-enterprise and then to small industry and now a large enterprise.

He praised Nadella for his leadership at Microsoft that has made every Indian "very, very proud", saying his style of empathy and that of partnerships, building trusts and relationships as also considering every mistake as a learning opportunity and believing that its people who are the strength of the organisation and not the profits or products, inspired him.

India set to rank among top 3 economies in world, at cusp of becoming premier digital society: Mukesh Ambani