Fund Manager Talk | Ajay Khandelwal on India @ 2047: Markets, shifts, and opportunities ahead

Ajay Khandelwal, Fund Manager at Motilal Oswal AMC, shares his perspective on how India’s equity markets will evolve as the country moves toward its 2047 Viksit Bharat goals. From clean energy and defence to digital platforms and domestic savings, he highlights the big shifts, risks, and investment opportunities ahead.

Edited excerpts from a chat:

As India moves toward its 2047 Viksit Bharat goals, what are the most significant transformation shifts you anticipate in markets over the next two decades?

By 2047, India’s growth will be driven by big shifts — clean energy and power grids, semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, defence production, AI and data centres, healthcare, manufacturing, rising urbanisation, domestic savings in equities, and digital platforms like UPI powering new services.

Trump's aggressive tariffs against India can challenge investment themes like China+1, Make in India, and Atmanirbhar Bharat. How do you see the landscape evolving from a markets perspective and does it require a change in strategy?

Rising US tariffs will hurt exporters that rely too much on the U.S. and lack pricing power. Instead, investors should focus on Indian companies benefiting from domestic growth, and on exporters like pharma, engineering R&D, and IT that are diversified across regions and less exposed to tariffs. The best picks are financially strong firms with low debt, high returns, and long-term orders, as they can keep growing steadily despite global uncertainty.

Which sectors or companies do you believe are currently at critical inflection points, offering special opportunity investments for the coming years?

The big opportunities ahead lie in companies supplying critical equipment for power grids and HVDC transmission, renewable energy plus storage systems, and data centers (like cables, cooling, and switchgear). There’s also strong potential in the semiconductor supply chain, defence platforms with long-term orders, rail/metro and freight infrastructure, and healthcare/API-CDMO manufacturers. The focus should be on businesses that already have operational capacity, long-term contracts, strong pricing power, and high returns (18–20%+), while adding exposure as they deliver on execution milestones rather than just news flow.

In your view, how does Motilal Oswal AMC’s QGLP philosophy give you an edge when identifying and capturing these opportunities?

The QGLP philosophy — Quality, Growth, Longevity, and Price — gives us a disciplined framework to find the right businesses at the right valuations. It ensures we back companies with strong fundamentals and capable management, focus on businesses that can grow for many years, and stay disciplined on what we pay. This balance helps us not just identify big opportunities early, but also hold them through cycles with confidence, while avoiding overpaying in times of hype. That consistency is what gives us an edge.

How do you see the Indian equity markets shaping up over the next 12–18 months?

In the next 12–18 months, markets should trend up but with some volatility, as strong domestic fundamentals and capital flows offset global worries. Earnings growth will likely broaden in FY26.

Many investors found the Q1 earnings season below expectations as signs of broad-based growth were missing. Do you think earnings recovery will come in Q2 or Q3 onwards?

From Q2 FY26, growth should pick up with support from festive spending, income tax cuts and GST slab rationalization, while by Q3 the recovery will be wider. Global uncertainty is expected to ease, domestic and export orders will translate into revenue, input costs will stabilize and margin recovery will start playing out.

If you had Rs 10 lakh to invest in the market right now, how would you spread it across gold/silver, equities and debt?

For a 5+ year horizon, most of the money should be in equities (about 75%) to capture long-term growth, while keeping 15% in debt through a mix of short–medium duration and target-maturity/dynamic funds for stability, and 10% in gold/silver as a hedge against uncertainty.