India’s Best CEOs 2025 awards: India engaging developed economies in trade talks to ease competitive pressure on domestic firms, says Piyush Goyal
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Union Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, during the India’s Best CEOs 2025 event in Mumbai—Fortune India’s most-awaited annual event—said the country is dealing with developed economies with regard to trade deals, and that the key focus is on reducing competitive issues for domestic companies. The minister said since India’s trade negotiations and agreements are happening with developed economies, it opens up a floodgate of opportunities. "An agreement is a win–win for both parties,” Goyal said at event in Mumbai today.
In a fireside chat with Shashwat Goenka, Vice Chairman, RP–Sanjiv Goenka Group, Goyal said this is the first time India has a standard operating procedure for how the country carries out trade negotiations, and with whom. “Unless we check the boxes and are convinced that it can be a good win–win situation, we don’t enter into a negotiation. The kind of countries we are engaging with now is far different from in the past; we are looking at developed and advanced economies where the per capita income ranges from $50,000 to even $180,000,” said Goyal.
The Union Minister vouched for the country to strive for high-quality goods and services, saying that quality always pays off in the long run. Goyal also emphasised sustainable development, saying that it is going to be at the core of any development agenda in the long run. “As responsible global citizens, we must be part of the global effort towards sustainable lifestyles, reducing waste, recycling waste, and reusing as many things as we can,” he said.
November 2025
The annual Fortune India special issue of India’s Best CEOs celebrates leaders who have transformed their businesses while navigating an uncertain environment, leading from the front.
Explaining India’s rationale behind not joining RCEP, the Union Commerce Minister said India was never a part of the original RCEP negotiations and that it was being pushed into a free trade agreement with China. “It took a lot of courage for Prime Minister Modi to stand on 4th November in Bangkok and say that RCEP is not acceptable to India because it does not meet our guiding principles.”
He also talked about why India must focus intensively on deep-tech innovation and encourage such startups. “We’ve just promised a ₹10,000-crore startup Fund of Funds, and I am allocating the entire fund to deep-tech startups. There’s enough capital for other industries, but deep tech has a long horizon, and success ratios may not be very good,” he said.
Goyal added that many Indian startups sell out a large part of their equity at an abysmally low price when they need seed or early-stage funding. “The sharks out there just tend to kill these ideas or buy them out very cheap.”
On the need for domestic capital to back Indian startups, he said Indian domestic capital is still not coming in sufficiently to support them. “I want to see Indian companies, Swadeshi capital, coming in a big way to promote startups because there is tremendous potential. Our talent is second to none, they do all of that in NASA, they do all of that in Silicon Valley.”
He said gradually, and particularly after COVID, India is being looked upon as a trusted partner. “The stability in policy, the predictability that India provides today, far better than what Europe or America provides, is being recognised. We have the talent and the ability to produce high-quality goods and services. What we need now is a mindset change.”