ET Now: The consumption impact after demonetisation has been fairly severe across the industry. When do you see the early recovery trends picking up and what's the outlook for the rest of the second half of this year?
Harsh Mariwala: I can talk on behalf of the FMCG and healthcare services industries, which are part of Kaya. If look at both these businesses, November was badly impacted because FMCG, wholesale, rural, grocer channels had an impact because of demonetisation and the sales were down. November was not so good. And going forward in December, things are returning back to normalcy but very gradually. So I would also reckon that December would also be lower, but a little better than November. It may take a few more months for the business to come back to normalcy.
ET Now: So according to you, what will trigger the return of the Indian consumption?
Harsh Mariwala: I think the immediate short-term trigger is the availability of currency notes of 2000, 1000, 500. Number two, I think there is some degree of anxiety among the users. What will happen? There have been so many notifications which have been issued by the RBI and the government post demonetisation that there is a certain degree of anxiety and fear that okay if I buy through cheque or a through e-payment, I will get impacted. So there is some anxiety and because of that anxiety, there is some fear and I think that is a matter of time things will just settle down.
ET Now: A part of this story and a major one at that has really been the hit has come in on rural demand, which is expected to recover in a major way in the second half of this year. Now rural demand, of course, will be slower due to lack of appropriate banking infrastructure. What is your assessment of the recovery process there?
Harsh Mariwala: So I think rural will be little slower than urban but it will recover over a period of time.
ET Now: But given the fact that the RBI has not really gone ahead with the anticipated rate cut, brokerages now expect a total of 50 bps rate cut from the RBI spread over the next two policy meets. Is that paramount for economic growth to come back at 8% plus?
Harsh Mariwala: I would say it is one of the factors. It is not the only factor which will lead to the higher growth rate, so just because today rates have fallen, that does not mean that the economy will just grow dramatically and that also by half a per cent reduction in interest rates...I do not think you can attribute only lower interest rates to higher GDP growth rate.