As Jon Gray recalls it, Blackstone Inc.’s first foray into India started slowly and then ran into headwinds during the global financial crisis.
“We had sort of a skeleton crew. We didn’t really have a great defined strategy,” Blackstone’s president said. “We couldn’t make the numbers work. So we did basically nothing.”
But that uncertain beginning spurred Blackstone to rethink what it was doing in India. “We said, ‘You know what? We just need a better approach.’”
Fast forward to 2026, and the picture for Blackstone and India looks much different. India has been the source of Blackstone’s highest private equity returns in the world, Gray said, after the firm shifted to take majority or equal-control stakes and focus on sectors including information-technology services, commercial real estate and domestic manufacturing.
Gray says there is more and better to come as the world’s fastest-growing major economy continues its upward path. “It takes time to get to a stage where you can really begin to expand your growth rate,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week. “And I do feel like India is getting closer and closer to that tipping point.”
Ranked No. 14 in the world in a 2005 World Bank report, India’s gross domestic product has grown almost fivefold to $3.69 trillion and climbed into fourth place—above Germany, the UK and France. The case for investing in India rests heavily on its large, educated population. It is home to 1.47 billion people and surpassed China as the world’s most-populous country in 2023. Growth accelerated to 7.6% in Fiscal 2026, the World Bank reported, cementing its status among major economies.
Mohandas Pai, former chief financial officer of Infosys Ltd.—the first Indian firm listed on a US stock exchange, in 1999—noted that 11 million people graduate annually from colleges in India. That tally includes roughly 800,000 to 1 million engineers or near-engineers, with approximately 500,000 of those considered strong enough to train for the technology industry, Pai said.
He sees great strategic potential in the US-India relationship, arguing that the US lacks sufficient STEM graduates to sustain its innovation economy, and that India’s human capital—combined with American financial capital, markets and marketing —could together dominate global technology competition.
“We can conquer the entire world,” he said.
Gray acknowledged that there remain points of friction between the US and India over issues including tariffs and how the US war with Iran has driven up energy costs. “There will be bumps,” he said.
But, he added, the trajectory of the US-India relationship has consistently bent toward closer ties as India deepens its engagement with capitalism, something true regardless of which US political party holds power.
Patience, he added, has been important for Blackstone’s investment in India.
“The real issue that has held India back for a long time was the infrastructure in the country. And it wasn’t just the physical infrastructure. It was the legal, the capital markets infrastructure,” Gray said. He credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration with doing a “phenomenal job” in turning that around.
“A lot of things are falling into place,” Gray said.
