ET WLF 2026: India likely to play a key role in the next industrial revolution, says Sir Ron Kalifa

India should aspire to be the country that the world will trust when a new economic order takes shape, said Sir Ron Kalifa, Brookfield's vice chair and head of financial infrastructure.

He said the rules of the global economy are being rewritten and change is bound to occur. India could be one of the actors to play an important role in the next industrial revolution, according to him.

"The ambition should not simply be to be one of the world's largest economies - that is the outcome, that is not the prize," Kalifa said. "The prize is to become the country the world turns to when it needs trusted infrastructure, trusted digital systems, trusted capital, trusted partnerships and trusted innovation," he said. "The prize is leadership not through size alone, not through capability but through reliability."


The world is in the midst of a phase where it can almost hear the future arriving, according to Kalifa. The question, he said, is not whether change will occur but rather who will shape the change. "Governments are redrawing supply chains, investors are redirecting trillions of dollars, companies are rethinking where they build and nations are deciding who they can truly depend on," he said.

Against this background India is an ideal place for a conversation about the changes that are taking place, according to him. "India has earned the right to think not about catching up but about setting the pace, not about participating, but powering the next industrial revolution," he said.

Also Read | Compute capacity is foundational infra of the AI era, says Preeti Lobana, vice-president and country manager at Google India

Brookfield, a Canada-headquartered alternative investment fund, manages more than $1 trillion in assets, with capital deployed across the globe. It has invested over $30 billion in India over the past two decades. It owns the largest private pipeline infrastructure company in India which operates a pipeline spanning 1,000 kilometers to transport gas. It also operates Altius, one of the largest telecom towers companies which serves 40% of India's mobile networks.

Kalifa said the artificial intelligence revolution will not simply belong to those who write the smartest code but to those who build the strongest foundations. He said it was not merely a software race but an infrastructure race.

"What will intelligence demand from us? Electricity, data centres, semiconductors, transmission lines capital, skills, trust," he said.

"What will intelligence demand from us? Electricity, data centres, semiconductors, transmission lines capital, skills, trust," he said. "Infrastructure determines whether innovation changes lives or remains a laboratory experiment."