ET Awards 2013: Winners have grit and integrity, says Vineet Jain, MD, Times Group

The past year has been a year of amazing highs and lows—we have seen the rupee fall off a cliff before recovering remarkably... The stock market has swung between all-time highs and three-year lows… The downbeat sentiment was causing foreign investors to write off the India story even as the finance minister stood by his pledge to meet the fiscal deficit target.

Last year, Mr Chidambaram returned as FM and fired the imagination of the markets with a flurry of reforms in the face of stiff opposition.

Along with the FM, our other winners this year have been riding out this storm of global downturn and domestic uncertainty. It takes grit, determination, integrity, strategy, and impeccable execution to weather a slowdown... All our winners including Mr Chidambaram embody the never-say-die spirit so deeply ingrained in the Indian DNA.

The ET Awards are the oldest in its category… We kicked off way back in 1998. But we keep reinventing to stay at the cutting edge of change... Not only have we introduced a new category this year— the Start-up of the Year award — but we’ve also recognised an ecommerce company that has come from nowhere in the past five years to command a valuation of $1.5 billion.

What makes this award show unique is that it picks young, innovative companies with high growth potential, while also applauding the best and the biggest in Corporate India. Ladies and gentlemen, ET Awards are what they are, because all of you come out in full force to endorse this show of excellence. I thank you all for making ET, ET Now and our online edition your preferred destination for breaking stories, analysis and comment.