Siddharth Mehta IL&FS Former Director and currently Founder and CIO of Bay Capital believes that "Businesses will need to think 'digital' if they are to compete and grow over the next decade."

1. THE PANDEMIC HASACCELERATED
GROWTH IN THE DIGITALSPACE
Siddharth Mehta
Former Director
IL & FS

2. "Businesses will need to think 'digital' if they are
to compete and grow over the next decade."

3. Siddharth Mehta is very excited about
investing in the Indian market rather
than any other emerging and developed
one. Because India has seen a
tremendous increase in the overall
penetration of the internet owing to
strong growth in low-cost smartphones, a
significant reduction in data prices, the
creation of an ecosystem of products and
services driven by the government's
digital initiatives, and the development of
low cost, robust payment systems. Today,
there are over 758 Mn internet users in
India with ~700 Mn smartphones. In
fact, the average data consumption per
user per month in India is the highest in
the world at ~13.5 GB and Indians spend
almost 6.5 hours per day online.

4. Talking about its initiation towards being digital and its impact on the market is tremendous. Over the last
decade, India has laid down the digital infrastructure pipelines - so much so, that today Digital activity has
become part of the daily lives of over half the country and has enabled India to circumvent the challenges
posed by its poor physical infrastructure. Be it bank accounts, KYC, daily transactions, accessing
government services, education services, and even COVID vaccinations, all of this is now digitally led in
India. Just to put things in perspective, India has the highest volume of real-time payment transactions
with over 25 Bn transactions in 2020. China was next at about 16 Bn transactions in 2020!

5. In such a scenario, it can be said
that India is now on the path to
becoming the largest digitize
business hub in less than twenty
years. COVID-19 also plays an
essential role to help India in
rolling out the digitalization
aspects. It has acted as an
accelerator for the adoption of
the digital economy. In every
sector and every business aspect,
digital activity has become
extremely important and
relevant as this was the only way
for consumers to access products
and services and for businesses
to operate.
Pandemic has accelerated
growth in the digital space!

6. Siddharth Mehta founder and CIO of Bay Capital said that "The digital transformation of India is only just
accelerating, and we believe the internet economy could grow 10x in 10 years from here on (to get to more
than USD 800 billion), resulting in many large businesses accreting significant shareholder wealth. The
nature and shape of the Indian economy and financial markets will be very different in 2030 than they are
today."
Today, the digital ecosystem has evolved, and many segments have consolidated with clear leaders emerging.
Across the globe, the nature of the digital economy dictates that the consumer would tend to gravitate
towards fewer platforms. Within this, leadership businesses will end up having a far larger share of traffic,
revenue as well as profit pool! Many large digitals, and consumer tech companies are already profitable on
the EBITDA level and PAT profits look imminent. Quite a few of these franchises plan to list in the next 12-24
months and will be very well sought after by public market investors due to their growth and profitability
profile.

7. In the last 20 years, technology has leapfrogged significantly and digital has become a part of our
daily lives. With each passing moment, consumer awareness and dependence on the internet is
only increasing and this has led to a rapid decline in customer acquisition costs and increased the
overall Life Time Value of the customer for digital businesses. The impact of this has not been lost
on the overall investment community as well. Focusing on investment opportunities in India's
internet/digital ecosystem as a result of digital transformation, Siddharth Mehta of Bay Capital has
stated that "Yes, indeed, there are many outstanding businesses that have created tremendous
scale and are seeing their paths to profitability getting accelerated. We are particularly interested
in those businesses that are solving uniquely Indian problems in uniquely Indian ways and those
that are targeting the next billion internet users in India."

8. The initiative towards Digital
activities of several investors
such as Siddharth Mehta IL & FS
Former Director will change the
overall scenario of digital
transformation in business very
dramatically in 3-5 years.