India 2009: Read This Before You Buy India

Read This Before You Buy India After a 15-hour train ride, we arrived in Mumbai, the world's largest city and India's financial capital. You can find almost anything you want here -- we're hoping to find the best ways for Fools to make money by investing in India. It's not every day that a top investor offers to teach you the key to investing in his country. But that's what happened when we sat down with Nilesh Shah, deputy managing director of ICICI Prudential Asset Management. Shah welcomed us to his offices high above Mumbai's stylish Lower Parel district, and we had a long conversation about India.  We were intrigued by his expert investing insights and know you'll be able to put them to use. India Is People To kick off our discussion, Shah pointed out that human capital is one of India's most compelling global competitive advantages. As we've shared with you in our earlier dispatches, the country is huge, young, and English-speaking. Yes, it needs to improve its educational system, but the foundation for decades of growth through entrepreneurship is here. In fact, Shah said, if you factor out India's four most underdeveloped provinces, the country has matched China's growth over the past 15 years. And while he acknowledged that it's not realistic to pull the laggards out of any data set, he wanted to show us that even though India's development has been uneven, the country is just as capable as China of torrid growth. What's more, India achieved this impressive growth despite its atrocious communication, energy, and transportation infrastructure. Yet Shah -- like almost everyone else we've met on this trip -- is optimistic that these issues will be solved and that once they are, India's true potential will be unlocked. For example, Shah thinks manufacturing costs in India could come down 10% to 12% with the establishment of a reliable power grid. This infrastructure would allow factories to run 'round the clock and not depend their own generators and fuel. That cost reduction could make India competitive with China and other manufacturing economies, opening up a sector for job growth and development. Can It Happen? Bharti Airtel and the rest of India's deregulated cell phone sector have made phones more available and affordable than ever before. Something similar has already happened in the telecommunications sector. A decade ago, India's regulated fixed-line provider offered woefully poor service, and customers had to wait years to get a telephone. Now, the deregulated mobile sector provides some of the world's best service at some of the world's lowest prices. Efficient per-second billing allows even cash-strapped Indians to own phones. The secret of this success was the introduction of competition to the marketplace and the establishment of partnerships between well-capitalized foreign companies, such as Vodafone (Nasdaq: VOD) and SingTel, with nascent domestic providers that had local knowledge. It's that combination of foreign capital and local knowledge that Shah thinks can be replicated to drive growth for many years. He's hopeful that it will because foreign capital, despite recent volatility, continues to come to India and because the next generation of Indian entrepreneurs is increasingly staying in India to work rather than moving to the United States or Europe. "Where will the next Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and the next Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) come from?" Shah asked rhetorically. "It has to be East Asia." That's because the region is capital-rich and has to innovate to solve basic problems at low cost, he explained. India is hard at work improving its infrastructure, though a few power tools would have helped the process here. "Take Tata Motors (NYSE: TTM), for example," he continued. "It's the only carmaker in the world making cars for both $2,000 and $200,000." He also mentioned a recent innovation fair at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay where students showed off robots that delivered 90% of the performance you might get from something made by Sony (NYSE: SNE) but at 10% of the cost. According to Shah, this combination of capital and the need for low-cost innovation will spark the Indian economy. The country's entrepreneurs -- the future Andy Groves or Bill Gateses, if you will -- will succeed mightily for themselves and for India by bringing quality products to emerging markets at prices that consumers in those markets can actually afford. The Secret to Investing in India After laying all that out, Shah shared his secret to making money in India: Bet on the business, and bet on the people. India is a "rising tide," he said. "Back the right entrepreneur, and you always make money." Always? We pressed him on this point. He replied that if your Indian investments are in entrepreneurs and companies whose business skills and quality are beyond doubt, then yes, over the long term, you will always make money. "Some will move first and some later," he said, "but all will move." That's the power of investing in an economy with as much potential as India's, and that's the philosophy under which the $20 billion Shah is managing is being put to work. Where We Can Find Quality Companies Bademiya, the famous kebab stand behind the Taj Palace hotel, is the most recent stop on our culinary tour of India. Not only was it open; it was delicious. Today, Shah is looking hardest at companies in the telecommunications and infrastructure sectors, where he thinks continued growth is inevitable. He's also high on "frugal technologies," his term for low-cost innovations that help computers and appliances gain a foothold in emerging markets. We agree that those are key growth areas in India, and we're also looking at the financial sector, where Indian consumers are just getting started with savings accounts and other financial products. We're digging into health care, too, a sector in which spending can only increase. We've lined up meetings with key companies in each of these sectors. You'll be hearing more about their opportunities for investors like us in our next few dispatches.     Tim Hanson and Nathan Parmelee Tim Hanson is co-advisor of Global Gains and has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. This is his second trip to India. In addition to discovering a few promising investment ideas, he's hoping to discover which region of India serves the spiciest fare. Watch out. Nathan Parmelee is co-advisor of Global Gains and has worked in Japan, the Netherlands, and Germany. He's a big fan of tandoori chicken and is eager to experience the distinctive cultures and flavors of Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

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