NEW DELHI

India’s reforms process needs to move from solely concentrating on ease of doing business to also addressing the speed of doing business, new president of the Confederation of Indian Industry R. Mukundan told The Hindu in an interview.

Further, at a time when government officials such as the Chief Economic Adviser have pulled up the private sector for not investing enough, Mr. Mukundan has argued that such investments are in fact increasing, and would become apparent soon.

“We need to reform even more,” Mr. Mukundan, who is the Managing Director and CEO of Tata Chemicals, said. “We need to get better at things even more. “More important for the industry now is the speed of doing business. We have got to talk about what can happen in months now and needs to happen in weeks, and what takes weeks must happen in days.”

Points of friction

He added that there are always some “friction points” that delay processes, adding that these need to be addressed.

“For example, you may get land allotted, but land demarcation may take longer because the collector or somebody at the collector office is not available,” Mr. Mukundan explained. “Until it is demarcated you can’t even put up a boundary wall and start the land filling.

“So, I think, there is a need for both ease of and cost of doing business, but we also have to look at the speed of things,” he said.

Speaking about other aspects that need to be reformed or that need government intervention, Mr. Mukundan said that he did not see a reason why India should have lower agricultural exports than The Netherlands, which is the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter currently.

Need for resilient MSMEs

He further said that the current West Asia crisis and the energy constraints it has created has taught Indian businesses to also ensure that the country’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) continue to thrive.

“We discovered in our self interest that we need to ensure MSMEs are equally resilient and ready for the future,” Mr. Mukundan said. “Some small company may be supplying a component. But when his gas supply is gone, your production is going to come to a halt. So, then you are calling the company to say for gas, not for yourself, but for that MSME.”

Where infrastructure stalls

Yet another area that requires further reforms and improvement is in infrastructure, especially at handover points between different modes of transport, he explained.

The infrastructure is good, but I think now the friction points are basically where handovers happen,” Mr. Mukundan explained. Why should it not take 24 hours to move food from Jammu and Kashmir to a ship and boat in Bombay. It should not be more. Currently, if the friction is very high, it can take a week.”

He explained that there is a lot of scope to speed up processes at the handover points such as those between boat to rail, rail to road, or road to ship, where goods have to be shifted from one mode of transport to another.

Private investment rising

Last month, Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran pulled up the private sector, saying that the profits of the top 300 companies grew more than 30% post-Covid, but that their investments did not grow during that period.

Mr. Mukundan, however, shared data to show that such private investments were taking place, adding that many of them would become visible soon.

“I think public investment actually crowds in private investment,” he said. “And the government has come in. Now private investment is actually stepping up.”

According to data shared by the CII with The Hindu, the addition to net fixed assets by private companies in India rose from Rs 0.5 lakh crore in September 2020 to Rs 6.9 lakh crore in September 2025, translating to a compounded annual growth rate of 71.7%.

“Many of the investments that have been committed would come on stream very shortly,” Mr. Mukundan said. “So, obviously we have been growing. The growth has to be even better and manufacturing growth has to be even higher, but the investments have gone up. It’s only a matter of time before we see them coming online.