Mirae Asset CEO: India Is Becoming a Hedge for Investors Outside AI Bets

Global funds have stuffed their portfolios with AI stocks, and now the question is where to hide if that segment stumbles. Swarup Mohanty, CEO of Mirae Asset, has an answer: India. In an interview with Menaka Doshi on Bloomberg's Insight with Haslinda Amin, he called the country an increasingly convincing "non-AI" investment hedge. He added that inflows of capital into AI productivity can only strengthen its appeal.

The published announcement contains no return forecasts, no estimates of fund inflows and no names of specific companies. So what follows covers only what was said, plus an analysis of the logic behind it.

A hedge against your own concentration

A hedge is usually an asset that behaves differently from the main position. An investor with a large share of the portfolio tied to AI capex, chips and data centers needs a market with different drivers: domestic consumption, demographics, the credit cycle, government infrastructure spending. That is the niche Mohanty assigns to India.

The "non-AI" label is the key part here. India is not being set against technology. It is offered as an exposure whose performance does not boil down to the fate of a handful of American and Taiwanese issuers.

The second argument: AI as a source of productivity

The second half of the thesis is more interesting. Mohanty says that growing capital directed into AI productivity could further strengthen India's position. The idea can be developed in two directions, and the announcement does not say which one he has in mind.

First: India remains a major hub for IT services and software development, and productivity gains from AI tools could improve the economics of those companies and their clients. Second: if AI raises business returns across the board, markets with a large consumer base and growing domestic demand stand to benefit. Both scenarios remain hypotheses until data arrives, and in the conversation, judging by the description, they are presented as a working framework rather than as established fact.

What the material tells us

• Speaker: Swarup Mohanty, CEO of Mirae Asset.
• Venue: Bloomberg, the Insight with Haslinda Amin program, with Menaka Doshi conducting the interview.
• Main thesis: India is becoming a global "non-AI" investment hedge.
• Additional thesis: growth in capital investment in AI productivity could raise interest in India.
• Numerical data in the announcement: none.

How to read this thesis in practice

The words of a large firm's chief executive remain a position, not analysis. Mirae Asset has a commercial interest in the Indian market, and that should be kept in mind in any assessment.

The practical test is simple. If you run a portfolio heavily skewed toward AI, look at how Indian assets have correlated with your AI basket over recent cycles rather than at a nicely worded pitch. Assess currency risk, liquidity and the share of sectors that themselves depend on AI orders, such as IT services. A "non-AI" hedge that is half made up of IT exporters will turn out to be only a partial hedge.

For those following the industry, the signal is different: the AI cycle has reached the stage where major asset managers publicly discuss insurance against it. The full Mohanty conversation is worth listening to for the specifics the announcement lacks: which sectors, what time horizon and which risks he himself considers the main ones.