India is now the world's fastest growing telecom market, with more than 1.5m new mobile phone subscriptions sold each month. But Karnik believes companies face tough times ahead. First they will have to break out of India and buy foreign companies -- both to defuse political anger and understand foreign business cultures.
"Indians don't understand Europe. In France and Germany, we need to buy companies that are established there and know how to do business."
Also waiting in the shadows is China, a country Karnik has been visiting since the 1980s and which is the biggest threat to India's success.
Talent pool
"It is the only country with a similar large pool of talented people," he says. "We have the advantage of knowing English, because the British left the language here. Similarly the Japanese were in China for 50 years and have left their culture behind in the north-east, giving the Chinese a great advantage in east Asia."
Karnik is confident that India's software and services industry can meet the challenge.
"Our greatest resource are our people," he says, pointing to studies that show half the country's population is under the age of 25.
"In the next 20 years we will have a surplus of people of working age and most of the rest of the world -- America, China and Europe -- will have a deficit. Now countries cannot absorb millions of immigrants easily so it is easier to outsource the work instead."
RSS