At 15th ChinniKrishnan Awards, Kamal Bali, President & Managing Director, Volvo Group India, urges responsible, inclusive innovation and ecosystem partnerships to build Viksit Bharat.
It is a privilege to be at the 15th edition of the CavinKare-MMA ChinniKrishnan Innovation Awards. My congratulations to every awardee and finalist, and my deep appreciation to CavinKare and the Madras Management Association for sustaining such a diligent platform over the years. Forget the award for a moment. The very act of identifying a problem and attempting a solution is an achievement, and the fact that you have started on that journey is a big thing. Recognising an innovator is valuable. Building an institution that repeatedly discovers, encourages and mentors innovators is even more valuable. This award does both. It celebrates proven innovations, and through the Great Ideas category it gives early concepts and prototypes the confidence to take the next step.
These awards honour the late Shri ChinniKrishnan, the father of the sachet revolution, a dreamer, an ideator and an entrepreneur. His thought was simple yet profound and inclusive: whatever the rich man enjoys, the common man should be able to enjoy too. That was not merely a packaging idea. It was a new way of seeing the market. It began with empathy for people, it challenged assumptions about affordability and scale, and it transformed access, long before inclusion, democratisation and frugal innovation became part of management vocabulary. Viksit Bharat cannot be about the size of our economy alone. It must be about quality of life, dignity and opportunity for every citizen. Innovation reaches its highest purpose when it makes safety, healthcare, education, mobility, finance, energy and everyday products accessible to one and all. To me, that is Viksit Bharat.
His legacy asks every innovator two questions. Whose problem are we solving? And what value does it create for people? I am sure the ten great ideas and three innovations we saw tonight are asking and answering exactly these. It is innovation with responsibility. Not just speed, not just technology, not just valuation, but trust, sustainability, inclusiveness and social impact. The most valuable innovations will combine technology with humanity, and progress with responsibility.
Friends, disruption is no longer an occasional event. It is now an operating environment. Geopolitical realignments, climate change, resource scarcity, rapid urbanisation, changing workforce expectations, new energy pathways and the acceleration of artificial intelligence are rewriting the rules of competitiveness. For nations, innovation will determine who creates intellectual property, who shapes standards, who owns trusted platforms and brands, who captures value across global supply chains, and ultimately who leads. Manufacturing strength will matter. Services leadership will matter. But the ability to convert knowledge into scalable products, systems and solutions will matter even more. India cannot remain the world’s delivery boys and girls. We have to own the entire value chain, and I believe accelerated innovation will get us there.
India has real reasons for confidence. Our digital public infrastructure and UPI, which all of us use every day, have shown inclusion at population scale. Our vaccination programme showed scientific and execution capability under pressure. Biotechnology, fintech, healthcare and deep tech show growing ambition, and our startup movement is spreading entrepreneurial energy far beyond a few traditional centres, with more than 250,000 recognised startups registered with the Government of India. Someone once asked me to define India’s diversity. I said three words are enough: from agriculture to AI. We are good across that entire spectrum. What gave me hope today is that this is truly a pan-India award, with entries not just from large cities but from rural India and tier-one and tier-two towns.
Our most compelling problem statements lie in globally competitive manufacturing, clean energy, clean mobility, agricultural productivity, water security, accessible healthcare and education, liveable cities, and the responsible use of digital technologies and AI. This is not an exhaustive list, and these are not isolated sectors. They are interconnected systems. The real opportunity lies in bringing together technology, infrastructure, policy, finance, skills and viable business models to create solutions at scale. We can be very good in silos, but that will not work. We need to join the dots, provide holistic solutions, and link those silos into a bigger picture. Somebody needs to take responsibility for that.
Let me turn to culture, which CKR touched upon so well. If innovation matters this much, why does it remain so difficult? Often the real barrier is not a lack of ideas. It is a chain of habits, hierarchies, silos and fear that stands between an idea and action. Our task as leaders is to cut those chains. There is another fear too: is my idea unique enough? Innovation does not always mean inventing something the world has never seen. It may mean seeing a familiar problem differently, applying an existing technology in a new context, or making a solution dramatically more affordable. If one solution costs $5,000 and another does the same thing for 500 rupees, the second is definitely an innovation. The question is not whether the idea is completely new, but whether it creates new and meaningful value. Originality matters, but impact gives originality its purpose.
To remove these barriers, we need a culture built on a few attributes. First, purpose: begin with a meaningful problem, not a fashionable technology. Second, curiosity: reward better questions and encourage people to challenge assumptions. Third, psychological safety: let people give ideas, disagree respectfully and learn from failure. Fourth, experimentation with discipline: start small, test quickly, learn honestly, scale what works and leave what does not. Fifth, openness and diversity, which I saw today in entries from Odisha, Rajasthan, South India and beyond, along with continuous learning. And finally, patience with ambition. Some ideas mature quickly and some take time, which is why the Great Ideas category is fantastic. Some ideas take longer to fructify, but they may be great, and we want to support them.
I am a strong believer that partnership is the new leadership. The problems before us are too interconnected, and the technologies too complex, for any one organisation to solve. The future belongs to ecosystems. Startups bring speed and imagination. Established companies bring scale, engineering depth and market access. Academia brings fundamental research, investors bring patient capital, and government creates enabling policy, infrastructure and aggregated demand. The secret sauce lies in this ecosystem working like a fantastic orchestra. Volvo will celebrate 100 years next year. Five years ago, if you had asked whether we would partner with Daimler, Toyota or Traton, I would have said no question, we are Volvo. Yet in the last eight years we have signed seven big partnerships running into billions of dollars of joint investment. We will still compete on product, but on the ecosystem we will partner, because that benefits society and the world. Partnership is not a sign of weakness. It is recognition that shared ambition creates greater speed, depth and impact.
Large companies have the scale of great ships, but in a world of continuous disruption they must also move with the speed of frigates, like small startups. That is why we run CampX, an organisation within our organisation that works with startups. More than fifty good ideas are working with us, and we have a list of problem statements to share. So my message to the innovators in this room is simple. When you have the right idea, one that solves a real problem and creates meaningful value, do not underestimate how far it can travel. A young enterprise may not yet have scale, but through the right partnership its idea can enter larger systems and reach customers across the world. The two hallmarks are the gravity of the problem statement and the solution idea.
CavinKare and MMA, you are building an institution of innovation, and you deserve special appreciation. CavinKare’s own journey shows the power of challenging established categories and creating value through consumer insight, accessibility and entrepreneurship. I came to know CKR through CII, and I know how innovatively and critically he thinks. MMA, with its long commitment to management excellence and knowledge sharing, brings together industry, academia, entrepreneurs and thought leaders. The real strength of this platform is that it does not only applaud innovators on stage. It helps them move forward after the applause has ended.
To the innovators, heartiest congratulations once again. An award is an affirmation, not the destination. You are still half-baked, and you have a long way to go. Stay close to the problem you set out to solve. Protect your originality while remaining open to learning. Build a team that complements you. Convert passion into process, and a prototype into measurable value. Scale without losing purpose. And remember a hard truth: failure is not the opposite of innovation. Unexamined failure is. Every experiment must leave behind better knowledge, sharper judgment and greater readiness.
India does not suffer from a shortage of imagination. Across cities, towns, campuses, factories and labs, there are people who see problems and instinctively begin to imagine a better way. Our shared responsibility, as leaders in this room, is to make sure good ideas are not trapped by a lack of confidence, access, mentorship, resources or permission. We must cut those chains and give this generation the freedom to flourish. Shri ChinniKrishnan showed that even an uncomplicated idea can transform markets and improve millions of lives, that innovation can create both enterprise value and social value, and that progress is meaningful only when it reaches people. May we build an India where every thoughtful question is encouraged, every responsible experiment is supported and every worthwhile innovation has the opportunity to scale.
My favourite thought is for the innovators: do not follow where the road may lead. Go where there is no road, and leave a trail behind. And to the mentors and backers, I will borrow from Robert Frost, who reminds us that the woods are lovely, but we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep.
