Event Host:

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining WisdomTree Office Hours on Can India's Light Out Performance Continue? where you'll hear from Jeff Weniger, our head of Equity Strategy, Aneeka Gupta, director of Macroeconomic Research, and Ayush Babel, Global Associate Director of Quantitative Research

Jeff Weniger:

Thank you. Thank you everyone for dialing in. I think we're going to go for about 45 minutes here with our UK colleagues on the matter of India, which every time we wake up it's jumping over somebody else in the GDP order. And we had a few sell side operators in the last, what do we think, one week or two theorizing that India could be the third largest GDP by such and such year. I think Jeffrey said by 2027, leapfrogging India... Excuse me. How is India leapfrogging India? Leapfrogging Germany and Japan.

We have an interesting set of news flow in Asian equities at this point. I'm live to the Korean situation, where we think the name and shame list that was popularized by the Japanese last week is going to come to Korea, perpetuating a bull market in that nation. Big bull market.

Side note. Over there in the Nikkei 225 for the Japanese, breaking to 34 year highs, maybe MSCI Japan does it. And then of course this one, India.

Those all three being essentially the, well, I'll ask these two over the course of the call the "Ugh, I'm worried about China. I need to come up with a different game plan." And when I say "I," maybe it's "I with my manufacturing operation." Or maybe it's "I the investor need to minimize my exposure to China." And then therefore, here you go with this beautiful run in the Sensex. It never really stops. Just kind of paused in 2022, 2023 making new highs. This being one of the biggest boldest bull runs the world over. And also Aneeka, much more participation inside the Indian equity market than our own market here, where it's Mag 7 and then also all of these also-rans.

So we had a little tentative schedule of things that these two want to hit on today. I'll kind of gloss over a little bit here. The drivers of India's growth, Modi and the general elections coming up very, very soon, IPO opportunities, and so forth. We've got a little inflation monetary policy also, hat tip to me here. Let's go open table for Aneeka to go ahead and take opening remarks.

Aneeka Gupta:

Thank you so much, Jeff and a very good afternoon... very good morning to you all in the US. I think India has really been dominating investors radars in 2023 and as we've opened the year in 2024, it continues to do so, owing to its strong performance. We've actually seen the National Stock Exchange actually surpass Hong Kong in terms of market capitalization, reaching that $4 trillion mark, and that's really been driven by some very strong economic growth and that's benefited from geopolitical shifts, such as the China Plus One supply de-risking story.

Now I think in terms of growth drivers, this really remains extremely important as to why investors are looking at India at this point in time. And I think there are a few factors that investors need to consider. Number one, India is benefiting from improving terms of trade. We are seeing earnings growth from the equity markets. Earnings growth are now hovering around 20% annually and the forecast is for earnings growth to remain at that 20% growth rate for the next three to four years. And that's really being driven by an emerging private CapEx cycle. So this remains very important.

We're also seeing the unfolding of a structural rise in discretionary consumption. So as we've seen the middle strata of society begin to expand, we're seeing that rise take place in discretionary consumption.

Now the other key factor has been the impending climate crisis. It's actually telling us that India needs to leapfrog many phases of evolution that the West have had to undergo or even China has had to endure. And we've seen viable examples where India has shown an evolution of mobile telephony, digital payments, e-commerce as evidence that such leapfrogging is actually possible and desirable.

So I think India is harnessing digitalization to actually lift up the broader population and the economy. And I think that's a very important point because it's beginning to address that very important rural-urban gap that tends to create more efficiencies and that's really opening the door to new digital businesses, products including payments and e-commerce. So I think these for us remain some very important drivers. I'm sure, Ayush, you have further to add to this.

Ayush Babel:

[inaudible 00:05:59]-

Jeff Weniger:

And to define terms really quickly. When Aneeka references China Plus One, that's the concept whereby, let's say I have 10 factories in China and now I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I'm saying, "Whoa, I have my entire manufacturing base in China. Maybe as I open up my 11th factory, I decide to place that factory elsewhere. Theoretically in India." That is the definition of China Plus One.

Key point you just made here. 20% EPS growth prognosticated for the next three to four years would be street consensus?

Aneeka Gupta:

Yes, that's correct.

Jeff Weniger:

Okay, and that might tie in Raymond Brian from Jani... Well, it was typed in as Janu. We're going to assume you had a typo. That's Jani. I guess you're out in Philly. How do we tell when India's view is overvalued? And let's make sure we get to that topic here where it's something like 22 times forward earnings. Perhaps it would be growing out of it on that 20%, compounding for three to four years. Go ahead, Ayush.

Ayush Babel:

Yeah, sure. I mean, we talked about some of the key drivers of India's growth, I would say is the structural reforms that come into place after Modi came into power. Some of the key ones being Aadhaar, which Aneeka was talking about. Basically, digitalization of IDs and associated biometric IDs.

And then there's UPI, which is a digital payments interface that the government has pulled a lot with some of the private organizations, which has sort of... At a time, it was unimaginable in India to see people moving away from cash. And now UPI sort of takes the center stage and most of these transactions, even smaller vendors to larger transactions, are happening over UPI.

So that's on the digital infras side, but also on the infrastructure growth. We have seen about 80,000 kilometers of highways being developed in the last 10 years when you had 80,000 kilometers at the start of 2014. So what you developed in the first 65 years post independence is equal to what has been developed in the last 10 years, just to give you the scale of things, on the scale of infrastructure development. Those are kind of some things that come to mind when I think about growth factors in India.

Jeff Weniger:

And we've dubbed this... We, the market, has dubbed this the year of the election. Certainly Trump versus Biden here, the Brits, everybody. There's something like 60% of humanity is going to the polls, whatever the number is this year. We're on an April timeframe here for India. And what are the implications of this election?

Ayush Babel:

Yeah, I think most of the opinion pros, if you go by them, they predict a historic third term for Prime Minister Modi. And now this would be starting in the sense that if you see the last few decades of governance in India, you've seen correlations after correlations. And what generally happened with correlations is you don't have concrete decision making, which was sort of lacking in Indian governance over the past few decades.

Now to get a majority in a country as diverse as India, I think there's a lot of things that have gone right with the decision making and policymaking from discernment. You've seen, as we mentioned, Aadhaar which led to the direct payments benefit reaching to people without the corruption that used to happen before when the government used to give X amount of money and only 10% or 20% of it actually reached the beneficiary. So now that some of those sectors, I've seen corruption being completely rooted out and some of them have seen a massive reduction in corruption, which was I think the foundation stone on which Modi came into power. I think it's quite...

I mean, you see continuity of policies when that happens and you see stable political environment leading to more growth. So I think it's a good positive for the country at the moment.

Jeff Weniger:

Aneeka, the IMF is saying that this is going to be a nation that grows real GDP at 6.5% in this year in 2024. The first digit on China, I'd have to think is like a 4. Let's call it a 4.5% would be the outlook for Chinese real GDP. So we now have this theme, we'll see if it holds, whereby this is the new engine of growth. The 20 years of always getting the 8% from China has long gone and that now we should be looking forward to this country. Give us a little bit of an economic view.

Aneeka Gupta:

I think Jeff... I've heard the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman actually echo the same vision of attaining... India striving to be the third largest economy by financial FY 2028. And I think it's really important to look at it in the grand scheme of things. Because it's a great target to have, but I think it's important to also consider that India's GDP per capita is quite low. India is quite a poor country, so it's GDP per capita, according to World Bank estimates, is actually at $2,257. Now if the Indian economy actually grows at 6% per annum, we believe it's going to take India 30 years to actually reach the standards of living that we're currently seeing in China today as per our estimates.

Now, this is an attractive long-term growth opportunity for investors. However, I think a stable socioeconomic political regime, which Ayush was touching upon, with sufficient checks and balances, is really very important to keep that development path on the right note. Because I think that divide that we've seen between the top echelons of society, the upper middle class, and when compared to the lower strata society, I think that gap has widened and I think it's very important for the government now to come back, reevaluate the situation, and try to bring the growth targets in a context of making sure it's a level playing field for all.

And I think digitization and a number of the initiatives that the Modi government has put forward is aiming to do so. But I think so far it hasn't yet been enough.

Jeff Weniger:

This is a question that came in from Rob. And Rob, I don't know... Well, let's see what we have to come up with as we assess the Chinese culture. I don't know that it's necessarily Chinese culture that answers this question so much as Chinese mercantilism that caused the lack of consumerism in that nation. Rob says, "Does India's culture lend itself to consumerism? The emerging middle class story kind of fizzled in China... " Yeah, yeah. "Because they're culturally not prone to spending on luxuries?" Or you've subsidized your manufacturing base and then the Germans, which is just now an export machine and then that's why you can't get the Germans to open up their pocketbook either. Is that German culture? Is that Chinese culture? Or is that really just your industrial policy? Let's go to either of you.

Ayush Babel:

I'll go after Aneeka.

Aneeka Gupta:

Yeah, I mean the way I look at it is I'm an Indian. I've been born and bred in India. The thinking of the older generation is very different to the younger generation today. The older generation would save. They would be a lot safer in their investments. You're looking at taking your savings, putting it into real assets such as property, or putting it in savings in the bank.

Today's generation is extremely, extremely different. And by that I mean they are very much credit-dependent. They're very much seeking to replicate a lifestyle which is similar to the West and it's evolved and changed from the generation we're used to, seeing that our parents told us about, and the generation that came about post-independence from the United Kingdom.

So I think that's really important to keep in mind and I think that change in culture, that change in consumer behavior, consumer lifestyle and spending, is also fueling the rise in spending that we're seeing from the retail. So maybe Ayush you could touch upon it from your angle?

Ayush Babel:

Yeah, I think there's a section of Indian demographic that is highly mimicking the West in a way in terms of being credit dependent or in the choice goods. I think there is a market for luxury goods in India that is continually expanding and then that's what you see with the recent M and A's and recent global firms venturing into India and increasing their sales. I think the sales of all the German auto manufacturers in India has gone up over the last few years. So as the sales of some of the luxury goods companies that have expanded presence in India. So I do not see that dimming down at the moment. I think that is going to be on the rise for some time to come.

Jeff Weniger:

I'll let the two of you read on the side the question from Faiz. That might be out of our pay grade, figuring out the taxes collections as a percentage of GDP. Part of that... Well, I don't want to speak out of term, but that was part of the reason why they moved to the cashless in the middle of the night move. That was, what, five years ago? Was because, the way I understand it, I walk in to the small retailer, I purchased something in physical rupees and "Shush! Nobody has to know." And then that was the graft. Do you have any comments on that for Faiz?

Ayush Babel:

I think India was heavily dependent on cash, as we highlighted before, and UPI has helped change a lot of that habit along with demonetization. So it was a strategic move to bring in demonetization and then enable the change with UPI. And I think that has been a successful play. You've seen the number of income taxpayers double over the last five years, which is a huge feat, bringing a lot more people into the formal economy. There's been initiatives like the Jan Dhan Yojana, which means banks cannot deny you a bank account even if you keep zero balance. So that helped a lot of people open bank accounts and then come into the spectrum of UPI. So all those measures have really expanded the taxpayer base over what it used to be a decade ago.

Jeff Weniger:

And wasn't it like 300 million small accounts were opened in one of these initiatives or some big number?

Ayush Babel:

That is correct. It Jan Dhan Yojana by which banks had to open the account and they cannot deny. So that led to opening up huge number of accounts.

Jeff Weniger:

So somebody who's in the countryside and is destitute has... Do all 1.4 billion have this account?

Ayush Babel:

There's still a huge number of people who don't. But then I would say, in terms of major towns and cities, you see UPI dominating. The proportion comes down as you move towards villages and then smaller villages, but then it is a change that's still happening. You see more people accepting it. And then they've recently introduced payment of our mobile phones where you don't even need internet to be able to make payments. So those measures help UPI go even further deeper into the more remote sections of the society.

Jeff Weniger:

And we had the two questions here from Craig. Craig, one of yours is just you typed in our ticker symbol. We hold number two market share with EPI. That's the earnings weighted. The claim to fame of it is, well, if you think about it... I think I kind of started to mention this to Aneeka. "Small and mid is working in India in addition to large." Everything is working right now. We'll see if that continues. It's a furious bull run. There is a broad market participation and the claim to fame of EPI as opposed to something like iShares India, which is our biggest competitor. That's number one... Would be that their market cap weighted and that when you do an earnings weighted concept, you'd be more fundamentally based and you'd have that ability to gather some of those things that may not necessarily be so high up in large cap.

But Rick Craig, I don't know what you're asking with EPI because you just typed in the ticker symbol. But he also was asking about... Well, we used to say third world country, I don't know if we're really supposed to say that anymore. That's not really politically correct. We call this a developing country in our mincing of words commentary these days and there is a big strata differentiation between the wealthy and the poor in this nation. But he says, "Given it's a third world country, although growth is evident, how is it... " Oh, maybe that's how is EPI constructed? "How is EPI constructed to best take... " Okay, now I'm understanding why you put those two together. "To best take advantage of opportunities, but reduce inherent risk?" And this would be, I would suppose, the fact that you don't end up with that top heaviness necessarily from any story stock melting up to the top like we have here, but that has not necessarily been the case in that nation, because there is broad participation. I misread it.

We also had, and Chuck is asking about the dividend mindset in India. It is a peculiar nation on the dividend front. Do either of the two of you want to field that?

Aneeka Gupta:

I don't have anything.

Jeff Weniger:

Off hand-

Aneeka Gupta:

Yeah, go ahead. What were you saying, Jeff?

Jeff Weniger:

Yeah, I mean... Well, I don't know if either of you have insights as to really why India is not really a dividend culture. It has something to do with the regulations, but when we designed the India product, we had been primarily a dividend operation here at the firm and we had, with the US product launches in the United States back in February of 2007, that's when we initiated our earnings family. And when we did our India creation in the form of EPI, we made it earnings weighted because we couldn't really find that critical mass of dividend payers. Much different from, let's say, when you go to continental Europe or Britain or the United States and Canada, where you find maybe 90 or 95% of the names might be throwing out a dividend. Not the case in India. I think this is what Chuck is getting at. What is the dividend mindset he has?

Aneeka Gupta:

I think when investors are looking to tap into an emerging economy like India, they're really looking for growth. It's all about tapping into the compounded annual growth rate over three to four years. And I think that's why we've, time after time, year after year, been saying, "India is expensive. India is expensive." It's been expensive for a reason, you are looking at an earnings growth rate north of 20% over the next three to four year period. And I think when you're looking at value, you want to look at economies such as Europe and Japan, but when you're looking at growth, you want to be skewed towards countries such as the US and India and emerging economies. That's the way I primarily view it.

Jeff Weniger:

And we have this question about the rebal on EPI. So Ayush, go ahead and take comments while I try to find, on the website, the index methodology.

Ayush Babel:

Sure. So the rebalance process is basically looking at all the stocks that are listed in the Indian market and then weighting them by their earnings or EBITDA. So that is a approach that is, as Jeff was saying, in contrast to MSCI India, which does it on market cap-rated approach. And we filter out all the companies that have negative earnings, so that helps you keep only profitable companies in the portfolio.

Jeff Weniger:

This is, by the way, the to find this and I could do a screen share is go to the website, pull up EPI, go to... what we call the landing page for EPI, and then click on the thing that says something along the lines of "Learn more about the index that EPI is supposed to track." Then do like a control F and type in WisdomTree India. Takes me to page 71 of this. And then I'm looking at this and it shows you, "Oh, it has to be listed here. It needs to have the minimum size of a stock to be entered needs to be X." That type of thing. Hopefully that solves it for you, Jim.

More stuff coming in here. Rao with a... We're not even going to get to Rao's comment here. Slamming democracy a little bit here, so we won't even get into that one. That's a political conversation. And we fielded this... Sectors? You want to do sectors?

Aneeka Gupta:

Yeah.

Jeff Weniger:

Okay, go ahead.

Aneeka Gupta:

Yeah, I mean I think a good place to start would be earnings. However, earnings fed and where does that point us to in terms of sector emphasis for 2024? And I think, if you reflect... So obviously India's financial year goes from, it will be ending on March 31st, 2024. So that ends the financial year for 2024. 2025 will be March 31st to the following year in 2026.

So for the third quarter of the financial year of 2024, India's earnings have been quite strong. We've seen margins actually expand for the fourth consecutive quarter. The only one to really disappoint was technology. Materials, consumer discretionary, they reported the best earnings growth and if we look at it, consumer discretionary and energy, these two sectors actually had the largest share of earnings beats. So I think that was quite important to take into account.

Now, I think Jeff mentioned this point and I thought it was quite important to stress upon on the importance of the Indian equity market and how it's quite different to the US and we're seeing that play out right now. In the US equity market, you're seeing this very high concentration risk, where you are looking at a mere 10 stocks dominating the earnings growth and dominating market cap of the actual index. In India, the story is quite different. While in the US equity markets are being dominated by technology, whereas the economy actually is more consumption driven. In India, the equity market is actually correctly reflecting the economy. So for example, banks are the backbone of the economy and financials make up about a quarter of India's investible universe. And I think that's quite important because we continue to maintain a higher tilt towards financials.

If we look at the banks, I think there was a little bit of a mixed performance in this Q3 in the second last quarter for 2024, and that's really been characterized by healthy business growth on the one hand. Control provisions. On the other hand, we did have persistent net interest margin pressure and some high operational expenditure. So there were some pluses and minuses. And at the same time, if you look at credit growth, credit growth was primarily driven by retail growth. So that's very important to take into consideration. And if we think about the corporate sector, the corporate sector did see a gradual pickup and that was really aided by medium-sized enterprises. So most of the banks have seen a slight dip in margins, but they are coming from quite a high level that it's been tracking over the prior years.

Jeff Weniger:

Ayush, there was a question came in and I know you wanted to talk about this. The IPO market. It's Jim coming back asking about the IPO market. And then also I'll tag along at the end how it works in the EPI.

Ayush Babel:

Yeah, so the IPO market, I think, has been booming with new issuances. You've seen over the past few years that, due to the startup culture that India has witnessed over the last decade or so, there's been a lot more number of new companies that have, first of all ventured and then now have been listed on the stock market. What we did see in the initial days was crazy valuations with some of the startups and Paytm or Zomato, to name a few. But I think now investors have become more and more aware of valuations and that part is considered in the equation when things are priced going forward.

But it's still a healthy market. You still see that startup culture booming in India. You still see the government support to startups. You still see industries like the semiconductor industry now gaining steam in India, with India signing MOUs from both east and west. So we have Taiwan in the east and US in the west that India signed a lot of MOUs with. They've also approved a $10 billion tranche of subsidies as a first leg. So I think it is going to be a healthy market going forward as well.

Jeff Weniger:

Aneeka?

Aneeka Gupta:

Yeah, Jeff, I think what we are seeing on the IPO market is really a reflection of what we're actually seeing on global equity markets. And that is that, at a time when organic growth is quite limited, investors are willing to pay up. They're willing to pay a premium for that growth, for that additional growth. And I think that's actually been reflected on the Indian IPO market.

So if you look at for the financial year of 2024, at the start of the year, the IPO market was pretty quiet and then momentum started picking up towards the middle of the year. So much so, we saw in India actually offering a really good target market for the very things that companies are trying to fix via M and A.

So considering a very important point which is diversification of supply chains. India is offering a very good plug to that problem many are facing. Many companies are trying to resolve problems with. Be it digitalization. India is offering a good opportunity there. Be it technology enablement. Again, India's offering a solution. And I think those three factors have been driving interest back into the Indian IPO market.

I think the industry groups that are ripe for consolidation are the financial sector. So we saw a very strong deal take place with HDFC. The healthcare sector is also quite important. I think not only the domestic healthcare market, but also international investment in healthcare is likely to pick up steam.

Infrastructure. We've seen a lot of focus by the government within infrastructure, but more importantly, I think we are seeing quite a strong revolution take place within the energy transition and in digital infrastructure and I think that's going to bring about a lot of momentum within the IPO market.

And then finally technology. I think it's ubiquitous. It's small. The mid-cap segment is pretty vibrant by deal count. We even saw ADIA, the investment arm in Abu Dhabi actually invest in reliance retail.

So I think the key driver are these three factors which are helping bring about a strong IPO market in India. Diversification is supply chains, digitalization, and technology enablement.

Jeff Weniger:

And I'm just going to show a couple... For those of you who are learn by the written word. that's the way I tend to learn. I'm a reader. You could go to these two blogs published in January and February here at the firm.

We have this one. Can India Continue Its Strong 2023 Performance? We think we know this guy. We think we know this fellow right here. Back on January 9th, with those of you who know Jeremy Schwartz, our Global CIO and co-author of Stocks for the Long Run.

And then this one. Brad Krom, India: What's Working in Emerging Markets. Brad wrote this, it looks like, about two weeks ago. Both of those would be over on the... Well, let me just show you. You're on the website, you go to insights, you drop this thing down... I've got stuff popping up on me. Of course. You drop this down to blog and then you would scroll through that and read our other literature as well.

At 10:38 Central, we have about seven minutes left on this call. I had an email from Aneeka this morning and she had wild cards in there and everybody was kind of like, "Well, they've got this going on. We've got…you've got the farmers." Tell us about some of these other things going on.

Aneeka Gupta:

Yeah, so we've talked about all the good stuff in India and it's pretty strong. It really stands out versus emerging markets. But there's also wildcards to keep in mind. And I think on the top of my list, Middle East tensions rising and in lockstep, rates remaining higher for longer. I think that could significantly dent the economic recovery that's taking place in India. It's very important to keep in mind. India is a net commodity importer. It imports more than 85% of its oil requirements. And so while the government is aiming to reduce its external reliance, and since 2022, we've increased our share of cheaper Russian crude oil in our oil basket, rising geopolitical risks is a cause of concern, especially for India. Because if you see rising oil prices, that's just going to widen our current account deficit, add further inflationary pressures, create funding gaps, and then lo and behold, that that'll have a big impact on the rupee. So I think that's a very important wildcard that I would consider.

I think the other factor worth noting is financial sector stress. We did go through a period where we had seen quite a number of insolvencies in some of the largest banks over the past five years. Since then, there's been a big clean out. We've had... The share of bad loans has fallen since 2018. Lenders have raised more capital. And in fact, if you think of Indian banks and contrast them to the US and Europe, we actually have a much higher proportion of stickier loan deposits. But the area of concern for me lies in the fact that we have seen quite a strong increase in non-banking financial companies. They've emerged as a very, very important source of finance for the Indian economy. And between the first quarter of 2021 and the fourth quarter of 2023, we actually saw the non-banking financial companies borrowing from banks rise nearly 54%. Now, we do have adequate capital buffers in place, but if we do get that financial sector stress, higher borrowing costs following tighter monetary policies since May could create that stress and result in a rise in non-performing loans.

But as the situation stands, as of now, our view monetary policy does remain for an easier pace for monetary policy. Clearly, the RBI has only had one rate rise since the year opened in 2023 and since then they've held... the repo rate on hold at 6.5%. Our view is once the Fed goes ahead with the first rate cut, India will soon follow behind. However, this remains an important wildcard. If we get that rising geopolitical stress in the market, which would have a ripple effect on tighter financial conditions.

Jeff Weniger:

Something else I wanted to point out here that I think is critical. If you just start doing some of this napkin math, the market cap of the United States, $62 trillion. Market cap of India, Five... Call it $5 trillion. So $5 relative to $62. This is a lot of what we've been talking about through the years with, well, with Japan and China as well. Japan's very similar in terms of this sheer lopsidedness of it. You have these major economies. If we hit the back end of this decade, you could be dealing with the situation where it's 3%... or ranked three in the GDP order and then you're at a market weight or even an overweight and you're holding 3%, 4%, 5% in this stock market that is theoretically, if Aneeka has it right, growing earnings at this double digit clip for three to four years running.

Now there's a series of questions. You know, everyone, you're asking questions at the 43rd minute. Oh, well, this is Rao saying, "Excellent job. Thanks for putting this on." Well Rao, we also do a ton of these on other ones.

Let me just quickly show everybody a way that you could maybe do research on EPI that might be helpful. Remember, EPI is an intellectual property whereby the methodology is earnings weighting. You don't necessarily need to find just an India blog from us to learn about it. You can find any blog that we've written about some of these other ones called EPS, EZM, and EES, which are our large-, mid-, and small-domestic earnings weighted, just to get familiar with earnings weighted as a concept and why we've been doing that here at the firm for now... You know what? Just hit 17 years on doing earnings weighting in the United States.

Ayush and Aneeka, I will shut up and let you take final remarks and close this thing out.

Ayush Babel:

Yeah, I think for me, it's the host of structural reforms that we talked about which makes India a story for the long run. You might see certain deviations between the underlying economy and the stock market due to various factors that Aneeka mentioned. But I think in the long run you would see the economy and the stock market trending in the same direction. So yeah, that's basically what I would say. It's the structural reforms that have impacted the economy for the long run. It is put on a path of growth and that is going to, in my view, continue over a few years, if not a few decades.

Jeff Weniger:

Aneeka?

Aneeka Gupta:

Absolutely. I would echo Ayush's thoughts on India. I think most investors think India has suddenly emerged and it's been a very easy journey. But in retrospect, I think we've been through quite a few ups and downs and I think this is India's moment that they're trying to seize, and I think it very much depends on how India is able to leverage on its favorable working age demographics. I think that is a unique point that sets India on a global stage and actually helps India stand out. And the ability of the government to actually leverage on that unique facet that we have is going to be critical to define the growth that we see over the next decade.

But for me, India is definitely a long-term growth story that investors should tap into to benefit from growth. And I think all of the inputs that we need to make this happen are definitely coming to fruition at this point in time, be it the most critical catalyst this year being the general elections and the state assembly elections. I think that will pave a very important role. And yeah. I think it's a great time for investors who are looking towards the Indian economy.

Jeff Weniger:

And he said, "Yes. I also have to field hard questions." Sir, we are going to email you an answer to that ETF.com inquiry. If you have any questions that ever don't get answered, email us. We want your business. We will end the call here at 46 past the hour. Ayush, Aneeka, thank you so much for dialing in from Britain. I know it's getting towards the end of the business day there.

Tune in for the rest of these. These are called Office Hours. They're on various subjects, various WisdomTree people. We appreciate the business. We appreciate you dialing in and we wish you the best of investment success. Take care.

Aneeka Gupta:

Thank you.

Ayush Babel:

Thank you.