Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Fairfax India's Annual Shareholders Meeting. I am Ben Watsa, Chairman of Fairfax India, and I will act as Chairman of this meeting. A warm welcome to everyone in the room and to those watching virtually. I do not want, and especially those that traveled all the way from India, to be here today. We're really fortunate that some of you got to see snow yesterday. I also do not want to discount the people that fought Toronto traffic to be here this morning. We thank you. Like prior meetings, we have the formal part of the meeting, then the presentation, and then a question-and-answer period with our shareholders. We're going to zip through the formal part now, and I hope you do not say this is the best part of the meeting. Okay, we'll move pretty quick.
I shall ask Jennifer Pankratz, the Corporate Secretary of Fairfax India, to act as Secretary of the meeting. I shall also appoint Shirley Tom and Louise Waltenbury of Computershare Trust Company of Canada to act as scrutineers and to compute the votes of any polls taken at this meeting and to report them thereon to me as Chairman. I can report that as a result of reviewing an affidavit of mailing and a preliminary report of the scrutineers, I am satisfied that notice of this meeting has been duly given, that a quorum is present, and that this meeting is properly called and constituted. I propose to move quickly through the formal business.
I announce that the minutes of the previous annual shareholder meeting held on April 10, 2024, and the special shareholders meeting on January 28th, 2025, are available for inspection upon request to Fairfax India's Corporate Secretary. As well, I now formally place before the annual report of the corporation, which is, in case you haven't seen it, there it is, for the year ended December 31st, 2024, which includes the corporation's financial statements for its fiscal years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, the report of the auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP on the 2024 statements.
In addition, I declare the total number of votes attached to the shares represented at this meeting by the proxy, which have been directed to be voted in favor of each matter to be considered at the meeting, which in each case not less than 95% of all votes may be cast on such matters at this meeting. Voting today will be conducted by electronic ballot for those attending virtually and by a show of hands for the persons attending in person. I will ask that the balloting be open to the registered holders and appointed proxy holders. The polls are now open on the platform, and at this point, all registered holders and proxy holders attending virtually who have properly logged in will be able to see on the screen all motions to be brought forth at the meeting. Following the presentation on the motions, Jennifer Pankratz will confirm for us that the polls have been closed. Once the electronic balloting closes, your votes will be submitted. With your consent, I now move directly to the election of the directors. I now invite nominations for directors.
I am Amy Sherk, and I nominate as directors of the corporation for the ensuing year: Christopher Hodgson, Sharmila Karve, Jason Kenney, Sumit Maheshwari, William McFarland, Satish Rai, Chandran Ratnaswami, Gopalakrishnan Soundarajan, Lauren Templeton, Benjamin Watsa, and Prem Watsa.
Thank you, Amy. Fairfax India's bylaws require the nominations of directors by shareholders to be received by the corporation at least 30 days in advance of the meeting in order to be valid. As no nominations for directors other than those set forth in the Management Information Circular were received prior to the deadline, the nominations are now closed. As the number of directors nominated is exactly the number to be elected, I confirm that those 11 nominees are proposed for election as directors of the corporation. Given the hybrid meeting and the fact that we will also conduct a virtual vote, we will have a vote on this together with the next resolution. I now invite a resolution regarding appointment of an auditor.
I move that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP be appointed as auditor of the corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Jennifer and Amy. For those attending in person, I would ask you to please vote by show of hands. All in favor? Okay. Contrary? None. Okay. We will now take a brief pause for 60 seconds to allow registered holders and proxy holders to complete their electronic voting on motions brought forth at this meeting.
Mr. Chairman, the voting is now complete and the polls are closed.
Thank you, Jennifer. I have been advised by the scrutineers that the proxies deposited for the meeting have now been voted. I can confirm that the nominated directors have been appointed as directors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting. In addition, I confirm that PricewaterhouseCoopers has been appointed as auditor of the corporation to hold office until the next annual meeting. We will file a report on SEDAR+ setting out the voting results following the meeting. I propose now to terminate this meeting. After that, Gopal and I would like to talk to you about our operations, and then we will proceed with the Q&A. I will now invite a motion for termination.
I move that the meeting be terminated.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Amy and Jennifer. I declare the meeting terminated. All right. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to the 10th Annual General Meeting of Fairfax India. What a privilege it is to see all of you here, especially those that have been part of the journey since inception a decade ago. As I said, I am the new Chairman of Fairfax India, Ben Watsa. Now, Fairfax India is the first and only company in Canada designed explicitly for sustained large-scale investment in India. Before we dive in, I'd like to recognize the people who have been at Fairfax India for the last 10 years and had the vision for our company. Please stand when I call your name in no order of importance. Prem Watsa. Come on, please stand. Chandran Ratnaswami, Sumit Maheshwari, Deepak Parekh, Chris Hodgson, John Varnell.
All of you believed in India, the India opportunity before it was evident to the rest of the world, and your conviction laid the strong foundation we stand on today. Before we reflect on how far we've come, you gave them a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now, the average Fairfax India executive likes to talk about India 16 hours a day, but I was told that's not the case for everyone, so we prepared the Goldilocks version of the presentation for you. Okay. Now, this slide our legal team was very excited about, so just please review that very carefully. Since this is our 10th anniversary of Fairfax India, we thought we'd look at what happened to India since we began and why we're so optimistic about the future of both Fairfax India and India as a whole.
Gopal, our CEO, will provide an update on Fairfax India and the investee companies. After that, Deepak Parekh will provide an economic update on India. Deepak is an advisor to Fairfax India, and he has led India's most successful, largest private bank called HDFC in India. It has a U.S. market cap of $164 billion, and that's bigger than Canada's largest bank of RBC. After Deepak, we'll open up to you, our shareholders, for questions. We have all the talent of Fairfax India in the room, including Fairbridge, our on-the-ground team in India led by Sumit, plus the managers of the businesses we've invested in. We look forward to your questions. Howard Marks, a famous, successful fixed-income investor, once said, and I'll paraphrase, "When you invest in something, know the circumstances in which you invest.
Don't go in with blinders on." I have spent 24 years in the investment industry, 13 years running funds. I have analyzed global markets, particularly small and mid-sized companies, and studied the successes and failures of market participants. The wonderful thing about financial markets is everyone has their own interpretation. My background has shaped my point of view on India and its opportunity to make tremendous long-term returns. For our 10th anniversary and for my first meeting, here is how I believe Fairfax India fits into the broader canvas of India's growth story. When I look at Fairfax India, I see a beautiful painting, and my role is to simply add a frame to highlight the vision of the team who helped create it. Here we go. Just a reminder, all currency numbers are in U.S. dollars.
Now, before we delve into the past, I thought it was important to show how India compares to a few other major economies today. We chose Canada because that's where we're listed, China because it's where India is heading, and the U.S., which represents the long-term potential of India. The things to look for are GDP per capita, which is how much money the average person makes per year. Look at the size of the populations and the economies, and then look at the growth rates. I'll just mention two things about Canada. One thing is we're growing slowly, and two, we only have 40 million people. For reference, every 600 days, 40 million people are born in India. You know, India has a population of 1.4 billion people. Now, Goldman Sachs issued a report predicting India's long-term growth.
I mentioned this not as a precise forecast, but to highlight the country's exceptional potential. They said that in 50 years, so 2075, the U.S., China, and India could be $50 trillion economies each. In that scenario, the U.S., which is at $29 trillion today, would roughly double. China's economy at $18 trillion would roughly triple, and India's economy at nearly $4 trillion would go up over 12 times. Now, the momentum of growth of an economy is what's important, and India will be the place in the world to compound capital. Even if India grows at multiples less, if a couple multiples less in 50 years, that's an enormous tailwind for the companies in India. As a side note, the highest per capita income city in India is Bengaluru, where our flagship holding, our airport, which we'll refer to as BIAL in this presentation, is located.
Bengaluru's per capita income is about 70% of China's at $9,000 per year. If the average person in India made what the average person in Bengaluru made, India's GDP would be $13 trillion. However, today's India's GDP is only $4 trillion. So Bengaluru is a good place to have an airport. Now, Fairfax Financial, our parent and largest shareholder, created Fairfax India. They predicted that under Prime Minister Modi, India was about to embark on a business-friendly environment and change the country forever. Here's a quote from Fairfax's 2014 annual report referencing Prime Minister Modi as a major change agent for India. We highlighted the most important part. He, Mr. Modi, governed as Chief Minister for 13 years, elected three times. Gujarat had real economic growth of over 10% per year during this period. Now, a show of hands in the room.
Has anyone heard of the 10,000-hour concept by Malcolm Gladwell for mastery of something? Okay. Okay. So most of the room. Prime Minister Modi, as Chief Minister, we estimate he worked somewhere between 55,000 to 74,000 hours, anywhere from five to seven times the multiple of 10,000 hours needed to master something. He mastered leading people and growing an economy of 65 million people. Most importantly, Prime Minister Modi governed Gujarat successfully before leading all of India. He's dedicated his life entirely to public service. No wife, no kids. He's only focused on serving the people of India. Including his current term as Prime Minister, he's now won elections for 28 consecutive years. Truly extraordinary. We'll get to his accomplishments leading India shortly, but I encourage you to listen to the recent Lex Fridman podcast with Prime Minister Modi.
You'll see someone with the character you wish led every country. Here we see in the blue square India's GDP growth from 2000 until 2027, a couple of years from now. When Prime Minister Modi won his first term in 2014, India was around the eighth largest economy in the world. Today, the momentum from business-friendly reforms has carried India to the fifth largest economy. India is on track to become the third largest economy by 2027, overtaking Germany and Japan, having already surpassed the U.K. last year. By many estimates, within the next decade, India's economy will rise from $4 trillion- $10 trillion. In India, India in 2025 stands at a magical inflection point. It's already the world's fifth largest economy. It's a size where it can handle global capital, but the vast majority of its population remains quite poor.
This is an unusual combination: tremendous scale, but low levels of income. That historically sets the stage for extraordinary rates of compounding, both from businesses and wealth. This is India's—here we go. Okay. India's growth these past 12 years comes down to three powerful drivers: a digital transformation, economic reforms, and an infrastructure build-out, together forming an unstoppable foundation for India's future. These achievements are profound and, importantly, near irreversible, unlike in some countries where new leaders undo their predecessors' work. Now, for the digital transformation, its intent was to bring everyone into the economy, no matter your economic circumstances. Nearly every Indian now has digital IDs, which is accessible through their iris or fingerprint, creating trust in the digital system. This ID was then connected to a digital bank account.
Now, anyone from farmers to roadside tea sellers had the ability to send and receive digital payments, creating a paper trail so they can prove their income to get loans from banks using a feature phone or smartphones. Today, roughly 900 million people receive some form of government subsidy. With the ability to receive subsidies directly to their digital bank accounts, it eliminates corrupt middlemen who once took a majority of the funds. Now, for economic reforms, we'll just go through a few, but these are the major ones. Demonetization, while it scrapped large currency notes and fighting black money, what it actually also did is it dramatically boosted digital banking. Digital bank accounts soared from 160 million to 280 million in four months.
Unified Payments Interface, which is where the government has digital transactions take place, that went from 100,000 to 2 million in one month, 20x after demonetization. Today, digital transactions are bigger than the U.S., China, or Europe. GST, streamlined, which is a goods and services tax for the country, it streamlined India's fragmented states that were operating almost like individual countries into one unified market. It was a game changer for moving and warehousing goods around the country. Production-linked incentives encouraged local manufacturing, such as electronics and pharma. The big success has been the local demand for smartphones is almost entirely met now from local production. That is up from 10% just a decade ago. India exports over $20 billion of smartphones, which was barely any in 2018. On an infrastructure build-out, airports increased from 74 to about 157 today over the last 12 years.
Total airline passengers have doubled to 250 million. International traffic, the most lucrative airport traffic, has gone up 4x to 84 million. Roads and highways: India now has the second largest road network in the world. In terms of highways, they've added 60% more than the total highways built in the 66 years since independence. In terms of port capacity, that's up 44%. To give you what it would be like, it's like adding the entire port capacity of Spain or Italy in that time period. Railways are now the fourth largest in the world, and India has added a dedicated freight corridor. Goods used to share the same rail as passenger, and now they have their own. They have gone from moving around the country at 25 km an hour to now it's 75-100 km an hour.
The bottom line is the government has invested roughly 3%-5% of GDP in infrastructure per year, and they're aiming to cut logistics costs from 14% to 8% by 2030, which significantly boosts India's competitiveness. Okay. Now, on the left side of this chart, this is where India is today. It's 17 years behind China in terms of per capita income. The average Indian's earning $2,700 a year. Today, over 40% of India's workforce is in agriculture, similar to the U.S. in the year 1900. Today, in the U.S., only 2% work in agriculture. They produce far more food because of consolidation of farms and the ability to buy industrialized farm equipment. Now, on the right-hand side, we show India is about four years away in 2029 from the lowest turning point. That tends to occur around $4,000 in per capita income.
At that point, there's a massive rural to urban migration, and it fuels rapid industrialization and growth. Then by 2041, which is 17 years from now, India might be where China is today. Now, here is India's consumer growth story in a nutshell. The middle class is poised to explode. Right now, nearly 1 billion Indians—India 3 on the chart—earn less than $1,500 a year. Now, that's a heartbreaking level of poverty. Over the next 10 years, 600 million of them could move into the lower middle and middle class, and abject poverty is largely removed from India. From this group's ascent, the 600 million, consumer demand is expected to almost triple from $2.5 trillion today to $7 trillion around 2035. That's huge expansion for any business targeting domestic consumption. India is a consumption-led economy, just like the U.S.
Now, India leads major economies in global growth by far. India's real GDP is growing at 6.5%, but not shown on the chart is that it's about 10% in nominal GDP. Within—and that's factoring in inflation. On India's $4 trillion base, that's like adding $400 billion to India's GDP next year, equivalent to adding a South Africa or a UAE every single year to the economy. By 2029, that compounding takes it from adding $400 billion to $600 billion. That's like adding Sweden or Belgium or more than Vietnam or the Philippines every single year. That's the pace that India is scaling at. This slide shows India's states in dark blue to the European countries, to European—similar sized European countries. Maharashtra, that's home to Mumbai, and that's India's largest economy, state economy. It's $479 billion, and that's equivalent to Norway.
Karnataka is where BIAL is located, our airport, and that's just above Portugal's GDP. Now, if we project these countries growing at the current rates out to 2035, so we're taking liberties here, and we grow India's states at India's overall growth rate, here's what we have in 2035. We have four Indian states that are now near the $1 trillion mark. Remember, the whole of India's GDP today is only $4 trillion. Maharashtra alone becomes a $1.4 trillion economy, bigger than Turkey, the Netherlands, Switzerland, or Poland. Karnataka is close to $900 billion. As incomes rise, these Indian states will dwarf many established economies. India is well poised to break out of that emerging market bucket, that label. In the coming years, India will become its own asset class for global allocators of capital.
Now, looking deeper, these are the top five Indian states by GDP, and they're matched with their major EU economies. Now, let's add populations. Each Indian state's population is far greater. Maharashtra has 25 times the population of Norway. Whoever said Paris is for lovers had the wrong place. In short, we think Indian states will simply blow through similarly sized European economies. Now, for Fairfax India, the investing universe is vast and only getting bigger. Let's compare how the U.S. stock market developed. In 1993, the U.S. had 70 companies that were over $10 billion in market value. Thirty years later, the U.S. increased to over 10 times that amount. Now, India has 114 companies that are over $10 billion in market cap. In 30 years, they might follow the same trajectory as the U.S.
But what's more relevant for Fairfax India is that there's 600 companies, publicly listed companies, that are over $1 billion in market cap. We estimate that there's also 200 more that exist in private markets that would be worth a billion dollars. Now, let's go back to those 600 public companies that are over a billion. Five years from now, that might be 1,000, just five years from now. Of course, below a billion, there are multiples of this many companies in the public and private markets. We've demonstrated that with investments in Global Aluminum, Jaynix , and Maxop Engineering. It is just a staggering pipeline of opportunity for Fairfax India's capital. Here we try to explain what does it mean when GDP grows. Here is a list of the metrics that grew under Prime Minister Modi's leadership.
We're going to show how GDP unlocks the economic multiplier effect. Growth particularly benefits the financial sector. Two of our biggest investments are the IIFL Group of Companies and CSB Bank. They're extremely well positioned. GDP doubled from 2014 to today. Market cap of the—so the stock market valuation has quadrupled. Unique investment accounts have risen 7.5 times. They were under 25 million when Fairfax India began. Today, 175 million accounts. By the way, in five years, they think it's going to double again to 350 million accounts. In terms of unicorns, which are startups that are valued over $1 billion, there's 118 in India, and that places India third in the world. China has 244, but China has an economy five times the size of India. In startups, startups have mushroomed from 350 to 150,000.
That is over 400 times what it is, what it was when the new government had started. The co-founder of Infosys, one of India's biggest IT service companies, projects that by 2035, there might be a million startups. Bank accounts tripled to 500 million. As I mentioned, they are all digitally accessible now. Internet users have quadrupled to 1 billion. Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of Singapore, has a quote about China and the U.S. I believe it speaks to both India's advantages. He said, "China will inevitably catch up to the U.S. in absolute GDP, but its creativity may never match America's because its culture does not permit a free exchange and contest of ideas." India has the scale and the freedom, and that is why you see so many unicorns and startups, even though India's total GDP is 1/5 of China's.
Now, let's talk about our single biggest investment, BIAL. Half of India's investment dollars have gone into BIAL. We thought it deserved a special segment. Hari Marar, Shalini Rao, Rajesh Rajendran, and their team put together an outstanding video, and we'd like to share it with you right now.
In the heart of India's Silicon Valley stands a vital link in the global aviation network, driving transformation and serving as a catalyst for growth, innovation, and connectivity. Welcome to Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru. In 2008, operations began with a focus on efficiency and reliability. Designed to meet immediate requirements, the airport had a capacity of 12 million passengers annually. As passenger traffic steadily increased, the need arose for enhanced facilities and capacity. 2016 was a turning point. Fairfax India made an initial investment of $337 million to acquire a 33% stake in Bangalore International Airport Limited.
Investments over the years have increased Fairfax India's total equity interest in BIAL to 74% by 2025. This strategic investment has been the driving force behind a rapid transformation, fueling growth, enabling world-class infrastructure, and redefining experiences, together shaping BLR Airport's future ambition. Growth has been nothing short of extraordinary. Passenger traffic has grown fivefold from 8 million in 2008 to 40 million in 2024 and is projected to surpass 100 million by 2040. As a result, vehicular traffic to the airport has also increased considerably, necessitating an expansion of road networks. With an upcoming metro link, connectivity to the airport will be further strengthened alongside road, rail, and bus services. Cargo operations are also expanding rapidly, projected to grow from nearly 500,000 metric tons in 2024 to 1.5 million by 2040. Infrastructure needs to evolve to fuel the envisioned growth.
Having already invested $1.5 billion, BLR Airport will see a significant investment over the next decade, enabling the airport's transformation into a superhub by 2040. Expanded cargo facilities, terminal upgrades, airside and landside enhancements, along with a futuristic airport city, are all being developed at a fraction of the cost required to build similar infrastructure in developed countries. Curated experiences at BLR Airport are redefining air travel. Immersive dining and retail offerings showcase some of the world's most renowned brands. Uniquely themed lounges provide a sanctuary of comfort and sophistication. A blend of global and local flavors creates a destination in itself. Complementing this is a luxury hotel within the airport area, with more hospitality options on the horizon. In addition, cutting-edge technology-driven solutions are making travel truly seamless.
BLR Airport is a unique investment opportunity in one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets, servicing a global tech and business hub. Its growth story is built on a foundation of sustainability, minimizing environmental impact while maximizing efficiency. A cornerstone of Fairfax India's portfolio, BLR Airport is an engine of economic progress, a destination for exceptional passenger experiences, and a hub to two major airlines. Poised for the future, BLR Airport is on its way to becoming a future superhub.
Fantastic film, fantastic film. We believe we hold BIAL at a conservative valuation, and here's why. Let's look at the top five airports by passengers in the world. The top five each handle 70 million passengers, but only one, Atlanta, surpasses 100 million. It is not easy to reach 100 million passengers. However, we're in a country of 1.4 billion people in the highest per capita income city, and the city is the destination hub for collaboration filled with software engineers. It's still not easy, but you can envision it for our airport. Here are some recent global airport transactions. Airports are never exactly comparable, but this might give you a sense of BIAL's long-term potential. Sydney has 39 million annual passengers and was acquired for an enterprise value of $24 billion. Budapest, 15 million annual passengers. It sold for $4.6 billion. Edinburgh, 14 million passengers, and it sold at $4.5 billion. Here's where BIAL would fit in. With 41 million annual passengers, BIAL generates $302 million in EBITDA, more than Budapest or Edinburgh, and is valued less than both of those airports at $3.6 billion.
Now, incomes are rising faster in Bengaluru, where BIAL is located, and more than Budapest and Edinburgh. Non-aero spend will increase much faster in BIAL than in similarly valued airports. The international component, meaning high-revenue traffic, is also rapidly increasing. We are a hub for two airlines, which comprise 90% of the Indian domestic market. These two airlines have ordered 1,800 planes, more than double the 800 planes currently serving all of India right now. BIAL projects to reach 100 million passengers per year by 2040. I'm willing to bet that Edinburgh and Budapest won't reach 100 million passengers by 2040. To demonstrate India's long-term potential for a massive increase in tourism, Paris today sees about 17 million international tourists. Hong Kong sees about 20 million. India, as a whole country, in terms of tourism, only 10 million people.
The upside for BIAL, we think, is enormous. And then, you know, looking at the sum of the parts analysis, we call this a discount on a discount. We tried to make this as simple as possible. The first discount is our three largest holdings. BIAL, which is 51% of our invested dollars, is a private holding, and we hold it at a conservative valuation at 10 times 2027 free cash flow. And especially given its long-term potential, we think that's conservative, and we tried to lay that out for you. Then IIFL Group of Companies and CSB Bank hold modest public valuations. And the majority of our remaining assets are in private holdings, with most of these businesses compounding at double-digit rates, and again, modestly valued between 4-13 times free cash flow. Now, of course, you, our shareholders, have to make your own assumptions.
Second discount, Fairfax India itself trades below book value, 26%. Just for perspective, if you just took BIAL, the airport, plus our cash alone, it is worth 96% of the market cap of Fairfax India, meaning you get the rest of our businesses practically free. That includes CSB Bank and IIFL Group of Companies. Gopal will go through a majority of our investments in detail so you will get a better understanding of what you are getting for free. Now, you can see our book value per share trend here since inception and our outperformance of the Sensex. We believe the next 10 years will be more fruitful than the last, thanks to India's reforms, and will continue to positively impact and rapidly expand the middle class. We are effectively a growth stock and a growth country.
If you share our long-term view, consider two insights from Warren Buffett. First, if you're a long-term investor and the underlying book value of a company is compounding, Warren Buffett welcomed periods when the stock price stays flat or even declines. Why? Because it allows disciplined investors to accumulate more shares at attractive valuations. Right now, as noted, Fairfax India is trading at 26% discount to its book value, offering that very opportunity. Second, Buffett long praised Coca-Cola's share repurchases, which steadily increased Berkshire's ownership stake over time without any additional capital outlay from Berkshire. It's a classic example of how thoughtful buybacks can enhance long-term value for shareholders. Fairfax India has been actively buying its shares, a topic Gopal will speak to in more detail shortly. With fewer shares outstanding, each Fairfax India shareholder's stake increases.
It's a dynamic not unlike the Coca-Cola effect at Berkshire, where our share repurchases quietly but powerfully compound long-term value. If you, our fellow shareholders, continue to accumulate shares while the stock does the same, that creates what Buffett might call a double win for long-term shareholders. To close, we remain confident that over the next decade and beyond, Fairfax investors will benefit from the powerful tailwinds of India's rising middle class, all while owning a stock that at the moment trades below book value. Of course, nothing is guaranteed in markets, but we believe the odds strongly favor our long-term success. Now, a few words on Gopal. As mentioned, Gopal is our CEO of Fairfax India. He has been connected to Fairfax, our parent, since the early 1990s. Gopal has been a central figure in the build-out of Fairfax's India strategy over the past two decades.
Fairfax Financial had a stake in an insurance initiative in India prior to Fairfax India. Gopal was our CIO of that insurance company, Chief Investment Officer. He did a tremendous job for us there. We exited with a big return for Fairfax Financial, and Gopal then came directly to work at the Fairfax family. Now, as Fairfax India's CEO, Gopal oversees our portfolio, working closely with Sumit and the Fairbridge team on all major investment decisions. We are fortunate to have Gopal as our CEO, given his expertise and experience having invested through so many cycles in Indian markets. Gopal will now walk you through some of our updates on Fairfax India, including our buybacks and specific investment highlights. Over to you, Gopal. Thank you.
Thank you, Ben, for the kind introduction. It has been an excellent experience working with you ever since this transition over the last six or seven months. I really admire your simplicity, your humility, and you being a great listener. Some of these qualities anybody would like to emulate, I would especially like to emulate. Good morning to all of you. I intend to summarize the 2024 performance of Fairfax India, as well as the six largest investments. Before that, I would like to express my gratitude to Prem and Chandran for their mentorship. Chandran and Prem have practiced the core values that have come to define the Fairfax culture. You would have seen this in more detail in Prem's shareholder letter this year.
I want to acknowledge the profound influence these values of decentralization, trust, and transparency have had on me and indeed the leadership of the investing companies, many of whom are here today. We will continue to be guided by these values in all that we do in Fairfax India. With that, I'll move on to, yeah. Here is a summary of our investments. We have detailed information about each of them in our annual report on the shareholder letter. Our companies are well-positioned for growth, as evidenced by their strong growth. You can see, especially, I mean, we have given you the five-year compounded annual growth rate of revenues for each of these companies. You will see specifically eight of them grew by over 20% compounded annual growth rate. Three of them grew by over 15% annual rate.
If they continue to grow at 15% revenue for these companies, they will double every five years. Those growing by over 20% will double in every three to four years, while two of them are being turned around. Fairfax India's existing investments have generated a return of 10% since inception, while the public companies have returned 19% and the private companies have returned 7%. The monetized investments have generated even better returns. The investment exits are driven by being opportunistic, as we did in the case of National Stock Exchange, and some of our secondary investments, minority investments in the market, are meeting regulatory compliance, as we had to do last year in 2024 in the case of CSB Bank.
At times, founders request us for an exit, so we have done that in the case of Fairchem Organics, or sometimes to create additional liquidity in the marketplace for better investor traction. That is what we did in the case of Fairchem Organics. Cumulatively, we have realized gains of $940 million to date. While we do not like our shares trading at a discount to intrinsic value, we well understand its worth and have been buying back shares, adding value to continuing shareholders in the process. During 2024, we bought 0.6 million shares for $8 million. Since inception, we have bought back 22.6 million shares, representing 14% of the issued capital for $293 million at an average price of $12.98. If you look at it this way, it has more than compensated for the dilute impact of issuing 8.2 million shares to settle the first two performance fees.
There is no accrual of performance fee in 2024. The total fees incurred cumulatively from inception, including performance fees, as a percentage of average cash and investments, amount to 1.9% per annum. Fairfax actually bursts all expenses of Fairfax India out of these fees. Therefore, I feel it's fair and reasonable. Our book value has grown from $9.5 to $20.96, while investments per share have grown from $9.35 to $26.85. Currently, the net worth is $2.8 billion and over $3.6 billion of total cash and investments and 135 million shares outstanding. In terms of financial strength, Fairfax India is very well positioned with $1.2 billion in cash and public investment securities against total borrowings of $500 million, with a leverage ratio of only 18% over common equity and a revolving credit line of $175 million.
Now, it is time for me to provide a summary of the performance of our six largest investments. In addition to the overview covered in this presentation, we have our leaders here today, present today, and we'll have an opportunity to directly hear from them during the Q&A session. Bangalore International Airport Limited, BIAL. First of all, thank you, shareholders, for your approval during the special meeting we held in January. We now own 74% of BIAL, with the rest being owned by the government. BIAL is now 51% of our total investment. As you know, airports provide contact-intensive infrastructure services. Under the exceptional leadership of Hari Marar, BIAL is delivering best-in-class services, as evidenced by the numerous awards and recognitions they have received on the national as well as global aviation stage. You have already seen this in the terrific video moments ago.
It is indeed one of the world's best airports. As noted from the video, BIAL recorded passenger growth of 9.5% in 2024. A notable aspect of this growth is the 21% increase in international passengers, which accounts for 13% of the total passenger volume, with a clear focus on further improving this figure over time. During the year, one of India's leading airlines, Air India, and BIAL have forged a transformative partnership to position BIAL as a premier aviation hub in the southern part of India. IndiGo, the largest domestic airline with over 55% market share, has also chosen to develop Bengaluru as a major location for their international operations. BIAL's cargo operations recorded an all-time high volume, and BIAL is the market leader holding a 28% market share of perishable goods exported from India.
Several initiatives have been implemented in the cargo business, including an increase in capacity to approximately 1 million metric tons per annum. BIAL's revenue increased by 46% over the previous year. Aero revenue increased by 39%, while non-aero revenue and other operating income increased by 54% in 2024. EBITDA increased by 57% over the previous year, and the profit after tax of $51.4 million increased by 18% over the previous year. BIAL's valuation is largely driven by three sources of revenue: aeronautical revenue, non-aeronautical revenue, and monetization of the 460 acres of land available for real estate development. Aero revenue is determined by the regulator tariffs that BIAL can charge. The regulator typically sets these tariffs for five-year control periods. These tariffs are calculated to yield BIAL a return on equity of approximately 15% on its regulated asset base. BIAL currently has capacity to handle 50 million passengers.
BIAL's growth plans, which will increase its capacity from 50 million to 80 million passengers by 2029, and over 90 million passengers by 2033, have a significant impact on its valuation. This will be achieved by adding a phase two expansion to the second terminal, ongoing refurbishment of terminal one, and building a new third terminal. The total cost is approximately $2.5 billion to be funded through internally generated funds and debt. Remarkably, BIAL is the first and currently the only airport to receive a strong AAA domestic credit rating, which is excellent in the context of our planned refinancing of the existing debt and financing for future expansion. Second, non-aeronautical revenue, which is revenue from all other sources like lounges, food and beverage sales, and duty-free shops, grew at a compounded annual rate of 17% from 2009 to 2020.
Of course, excluding the impact of the pandemic years, it has resumed its strong growth trajectory from 2023, and it's an objective to increase it by five times over the next decade, driven by the extra space, attractive surroundings, and all the excellent initiatives launched by BIAL. On the real estate front, significant progress has been made in plans to monetize the 460 acres of land available for development. We have shared with you the various initiatives undertaken during the year, which included approximately 94 acres of incremental development, cumulatively covering around 107 acres. This leaves approximately 350 acres available for future development. Valuation of Fairfax India's interest in BIAL increased to $1.63 billion, representing a $32 million increase in 2024, which implies an equity value of approximately $2.55 billion for the entire company.
Excluding any cash flow from real estate monetization, this is 10.1 times this normalized free cash flow. In 2019, Fairfax India established Anchorage Infrastructure Investment Holdings Assets, a flagship vehicle for investments in airport and other infrastructure projects in India. We are awaiting approvals to complete Anchorage's IPO, which has taken much longer than we expected. We are excited about the prospects of BIAL and the growth and the potential of the aviation industry in India. Financial services. Moving on to our three significant investments in the financial services sector, I would like to begin with CSB Bank. CSB is one of the oldest private sector banks in India. It has over 811 branches and 777 ATMs spread across the country.
We own 40% of the bank, and our investment attributable to this 40% stake we hold, which was made in 2018 for $136 million, is currently valued around $255 million. In June 2024, Fairfax India sold 9.7% equity interest in CSB Bank for approximately $71 million in gross proceeds to comply with the RBI's dilution requirements. Under the strong leadership of CEO Pralay Mondal, CSB continues to make excellent progress. It has already assembled a best-in-industry-class professionals management team across its focus areas to build scale, while migrating its core banking system to a more advanced system, aimed at enhancing customer experience to match the best in the industry. We outlined in our letter the various regulatory measures by the central bank. The Reserve Bank of India aimed at containing perceived excessive risk built up from high credit growth in the unsecured retail segment.
Monetary policy was tightened across all three fronts: policy rates, liquidity, and regulatory measures. Regulatory measures resulting in higher risk weightage on exposure to consumer credit, exposure to non-banking financial companies, and credit card receivables. The industry grew below its long-term trend, with deposits registering just a little over 10% growth and credits at 12% growth, while the credit-to-deposit ratio remained elevated at 79% for the whole banking system. Under the given operating environment, CSB made excellent progress in its key performance measures in 2024. Loan advances increased by 26%, and deposits rose by 22%. The yield on advances increased by about 15 basis points. Net interest income grew by 3.6%. Net interest margin decreased from 5.2% but remained at an industry-leading 4.5%. NIM was also impacted by changes in how banks account for penal interest income following regulatory guidance on penal interest.
The cost of deposits increased by 90 basis points to 6%, and the low-cost cost ratio declined to 24% of total deposits due to stronger growth in term deposits in the current high-interest rate environment. The industry as a whole has been experiencing slower growth in the low-cost deposits typically, so that has been the case. Asset quality is excellent, with gross NPA at 1.6% and net NPA at 60 basis points and provision coverage ratio of close to 82%. Compared to other banks, CSB's performance is among the very best in its peer group. We are very excited about the long-term prospects for CSB. IIFL Finance, a non-deposit-taking finance company, is one of the larger non-bank finance companies in India. It has over 4,850 branches with nearly 38,000 employees and serves more than 4 million customers.
We own 15.2% of the company, acquired for $101 million, and it is currently valued at $311 million. Under the leadership of its CEO, Nirmal Jain, who is also the founder and a significant shareholder of the IIFL Group companies, and his long-term partner, Mr. Venkat Raman, the IIFL Group has evolved into a leading domestic financial conglomerate. IIFL Finance has consistently grown over the years, largely driven by organic growth. To emerge as a significant player across its key segments: gold loans, housing finance, small business financing, and microfinance. It has assets under management of over $8.3 billion, which has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 15% over the past five years, despite a considerable period of time where the gold loans were under embargo.
As we had announced earlier, the RBI had directed IIFL to stop making new gold loans effective March 4, 2024, until it concluded a special audit and was satisfied with the compliance standards. We are pleased to report that IIFL has complied with all the requirements in close coordination with the regulator, and the ban was withdrawn effective September 19th, 2024. The market size of gold loans in India is approximately $31 billion, with NBFCs holding around 60% market share in the gold loan segment. In the gold loan segment, IIFL held a 15% market share of the NBFCs' total gold loan market. The IIFL gold loan AUM was $2.8 billion, which decreased by 54% by the time the ban was lifted due to normal repayments. Gold loans are generally very low-duration loans.
It is very heartening to note that the portfolio has performed consistently during the embargo period, which reinforces our conviction that IIFL has a good underwriting standard when it comes to gold loans. IIFL is focused on regaining its market position in gold loans, which remains one of its key areas of growth. IIFL Finance has grown organically since its inception without diluting equity capital of the parent company. Its home finance subsidiary, though, it raised $275 million from a sovereign fund in 2022, valuing its subsidiary at $1.4 billion then. Following the RBI action to restore the confidence of various stakeholders, and more specifically the lenders, a rights issue was announced. Despite the company being underleveraged and having adequate capital, IIFL successfully completed the rights issue, which was oversubscribed. Fairfax India subscribed to its entitlement, resulting in our exposure to IIFL Finance increasing by around $25 million.
IIFL Finance continues to pursue its strategy of growing its business by expanding its assets under management through co-lending practices with other banks or assigning assets to other lenders, primarily banks. This strategy represents about 30% of its AUM. 2024 was a mixed year for IIFL. Its gold loan business was halted for over six months, and the financial conditions were tight, stemming from a tight monetary policy and tightening of capital adequacy standards we just discussed when we discussed about CSB Bank. We observed a kind of form of moral subversion by the Reserve Bank of India last year, urging banks to reduce their exposure to the NBFC sector in general. During the year, IIFL's AUM experienced a decline of 8% over the previous year to $8.3 billion.
This was mainly due to a decrease in gold loans, a 39% decline in gold loans, and partially offset by a growth in home loans of 19%. However, IIFL Finance's revenue increased by 5%, while net income decreased by 62% to $90.5 million, resulting in an ROE of 6%. The below-average ROE was partially due to the decline in gold loans, a one-time provision of $70.1 million, resulting from the restructuring of certain investments, an increased capital base following the rights issue, and higher-than-normal capital levels at IIFL Home Finance, which were a result of the capital inflation we discussed.
While its asset quality is relatively better than the industry average, with gross NPAs at 2.4% and net NPA at 1%, an increase of 70 basis points in gross NPAs and 10 basis points in net NPA during the year, it experienced higher credit costs in certain segments such as microfinance and small business finance done via digital mode. Microfinance as a segment is experiencing higher credit costs for the entire financial system, and IIFL is no exception. IIFL's provision coverage stood at 114% at the end of December 2024, with a well-diversified asset portfolio comprising 98% of assets in retail, a capital adequacy ratio of 22% for the parent IIFL Finance and 46% for the subsidiary Home Finance, and a net interest margin of over 8.5%. IIFL Finance is well-positioned to capture opportunities unfolding for the NBFC sector.
Moving on to IIFL Capital, led by R. Venkat araman, IIFL Capital is a major capital market player offering full-service brokerage, investment banking, and distribution of financial products in the Indian financial services market. It has over $29 billion of assets under custody and management. It offers unparalleled research coverage for over 280 companies, serving more than 1,000 institutional clients and over 3 million retail clients. We own 27.3% of IIFL Capital, which we acquired for an investment of $51 million and is now valued at over $323 million. During the year, it has taken significant steps to enter the wealth management services market. The current estimate of the addressable asset pool for the ultra-high net worth and high net worth individuals is approximately $1 trillion in India. IIFL Capital intends to capture its share of this growing market. It has already invested in best-in-class professionals to build a scale in this business.
Over the last decade, we have witnessed a clear momentum in the deepening of penetration of financial services in India. One of the key attractions for global investors in India is the participation by domestic investors across various financial instruments and their potential. Over 150 million new securities accounts were added. Equity cash volumes have grown at an annual rate of 20%, and the number of active clients on the National Stock Exchange has grown at a compounded annual rate of 25%, while options and futures have grown more significantly. There has also been a concomitant growth in the primary capital market activities, as well as the penetration of domestic mutual funds and wealth management services. 2024 was another excellent year, following what we described in the previous year as its best-ever year. Revenue grew by 40% and net income grew by 83%, generating an ROE of 31%.
At a valuation of only 13 times earnings and 3.8 times book value per share, it is still trading at a discount to its peers, while the market has re-rated the capital market players. As the Indian capital market continues to grow in stature, currently ranking as the fifth largest in terms of market capitalization, IIFL Capital is one of the top three domestic players in the capital market, boasting strong brand equity and a loyal client base. We expect it to remain an excellent investment for us. Seven Islands Shipping. We have three investments comprising 7% of our portfolio in transportation, logistics, and storage services. I will briefly touch upon the largest of the three, Seven Islands Shipping, one of our star performers. Founded and led by Captain Thomas Pinto, it is the second-largest private tanker shipping company in India.
We own 48.5% of the company, and our initial investment of $84 million is currently valued at $146 million, in addition to the $36 million in dividends we have received since making this investment. Seven Islands is a market leader in tanker-time charter along the Indian coast, with 24% overall market share. In recent years, Seven Islands has made two new initiatives. One is setting up a wholly owned subsidiary in the UAE to charter vessels in the international market. Second, it established a maritime training institute, a not-for-profit undertaking located near Mumbai. The institute has a record of over 400 graduates with good placements on track. Seven Islands distinguishes itself by managing its fleet acquisition and deployment based on the time charter deployment. Over the past six years, time charter revenue averaged 76% of the total charter revenue.
It has a great track record of acquiring ships at the right valuation, with clear deployment opportunities. Since the time of our acquisition, when it owned 14 vessels to its current fleet of 26 vessels, it has grown with a high level of financial prudence. 2024 was yet another record year for Seven Islands, driven by higher charter rates, increased time charter deployment, and a higher average vessel utilization rate at 96%. Its revenue increased by 25%, and its operating EBITDA grew by a similar 22% in line with its revenue growth. Profits grew by a lower percentage as the gain from the ship sales were lower year-over-year. Shareholders' equity grew by 11% to $231 million, generating an ROE of 35%, even after the special dividend of $61.6 million it made in December 2024, of which $29.30 million close to $30 million was received by Fairfax India.
Since the time we acquired our interest in Seven Islands, it has generated a free cash flow of $302 million, an average annual free cash flow on investment of about 30%. At a carrying valuation of less than five times earnings and four times cash flow, we anticipate a significant improvement in the value of this investment. Manufacturing accounts for approximately 1/6 of the GDP, and the Modi government has a vision to increase the manufacturing contribution to close to 25% of the GDP. We have discussed many of these aspects in our shareholder letter. Fairfax India has five companies comprising 17% of our portfolio in manufacturing, run by excellent founders we are proud to partner with. Let me now move on to Sanmar Chemicals, led by Vijay Sankar, which is one of the largest manufacturers of PVC and caustic soda in India and Egypt.
We own 42.9% of Sanmar, which was acquired for an investment of $199 million and is currently valued at $201 million. Sanmar had another very difficult year in 2024 due to a prolonged PVC down cycle, severe PVC dumping from China into India impacting the Indian operations. Poor demand conditions elsewhere, like the United States, further compounded the situation. Incremental capital costs of the capacity expansion in custom manufacturing of chemicals and paste PVC during the year. The global down cycle in PVC, coinciding with the foreign exchange crisis in Egypt, adversely impacted the TCI, the Egyptian subsidiary's performance. At the consolidated level, Sanmar's revenue for the year fell 3%, and EBITDA of $55.3 million was down 42%, and it incurred a loss before tax of $125 million. The government of India has announced an anti-dumping duty on the import of both specialty and suspension PVC.
The rates vary depending upon the source of the product, the origin of the product. Sanmar's suspension PVC capacity of 731,000 tons per annum, split between India and Egypt, is in geographies with huge deficits in PVC and is well-positioned to serve the surrounding markets, thanks to its excellent relationships with both the trade and the end users. Indian demand alone is estimated to be around 4 million tons per annum, matched by only 1.5 million tons of capacity within India. Similarly, normalized demand for PVC in Egypt alone exceeds 400,000 tons, while the Middle East and Africa region has a deficit of 1.5 million tons per annum. The Sanmar Group has been supporting its Egyptian businesses, which has enabled it to remain in operation. Additionally, the group has also expanded its presence in high-margin custom manufactured chemicals by forging strong relationships with the four major innovators in agrochemicals.
An initial investment of $80 million has already been made and is expected to be a highly profitable business going forward. We are hopeful that business will stabilize in 2025 and turn profitable. Going forward, every $10 improvement in PVC, given the capacity of 731,000 metric tons, its contribution margin brings $7.3 million towards the recovery of overheads and profitability. The current fair value at which we carry Sanmar is less than the value of the listed Indian subsidiary, leaving any upside from TCI aside. A significant upside potential from TCI is in the offing, as and when the market conditions improve, we expect they eventually will. Fairfax India has investments in several other companies in manufacturing.
We have Fairchem Organics, an oleochemical company, Maxop Engineering, an aluminum die-casting and machining company, Jaynix Engineering, an aluminum electrical parts manufacturer, Global Aluminum, a manufacturer of extruded aluminum products, profiles, and parts. All of them have demonstrated excellent growth, with their revenues compounding at rates between 16%-26% over the past five years. They are on a good growth trajectory with excellent financial discipline. Maxop, Jaynix, and Global Aluminum are the most recent additions. All of them are engaged in manufacturing of fast-growing aluminum products, with strong growth in both exports and domestic markets. Maxop is benefiting from the global migration to lightweight materials in the automotive sector, with products focused on both passenger and commercial vehicles.
A few common attributes of these businesses include their ability to adapt to fluctuating demand, manufacture a variety of complex parts, meet high-quality standards, and establish relationships with the global and Indian OEMs and marquee customers. They also engage with their customers from the very early stage of product design, thereby forging a stronger relationship with the customers. We are, of course, monitoring the impact of coming out of President Trump's announcement on April 2nd on tariffs. These are early days, and we will see how these tariffs affect our companies. I'm happy to discuss during the Q&A. In other companies in financial services, we have 5Paisa Capital, a discount broker, and a technology-based financial services company part of the IIFL Group. In logistics and storage, we have NCML, an agriculture warehousing company, and Saurashtra Freight, a container freight station.
Most of them are excellent businesses that continue to make good progress. Our annual report provides more detailed information about each of these companies. With that, I will turn the microphone back to Ben. Thank you all. Now, we'll invite Mr. Parekh to come over the podium.
Prabha, Ben, Chandran, Gopal, Sumit, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, Prabha, for persuading me to come from 40 degrees to - 4 degrees. As they say, there are weeks when decades happen, and "Make America Great Again" is, and its impact on global markets currently feels like that, how decades have happened in a couple of weeks. Global financial markets have in the recent period seen extreme exuberance on one side and extreme pessimism on the other. Fortunately, the nature of the capital markets is such that over time, they do tend to self-correct.
But certainly, there will be more cycles of global volatility. The U.S. itself faces uncertainty on its own policy on trade, immigration, fiscal policy, and regulations. Suffice to say that global resilience is being tested to the hilt. The reality, however, is that no one can currently fully fathom the outcomes that may play out on trade, on tariffs, on retaliatory tariffs, and bilateral trade agreements. The verdict of the global stock markets has been evident in the bout of sharp selloffs. It's going to be a phase of several pivots. Against this backdrop, let me endeavor to briefly provide an overview of the Indian economy. Ben has given a detailed presentation on the Indian economy with lots of numbers. I try and not repeat any of that. But India's nominal GDP is estimated, as Ben said, $3.9 trillion and continues to be the fastest-growing major economy in the world.
A GDP growth rate of 6.5%- 7%, as compared to the GDP of the world under 3%, stands testimony of India's continuing strong macros. While India is not shielded from global volatility, India faces a relatively lesser impact compared to other emerging economies, and I'll tell you the reason why. One is that 71% of our GDP in India comes from domestic consumption, both private and government. The second reason is our exports from India are largely services-driven, and they tend to be less cyclical. India has a low exposure on commodity exports. These are the reasons we believe that the impact on India is going to be lesser than other emerging economies, which are export-oriented and export-dominated. We are basically a service-exporting nation. The question is, what is India's stance on tariffs?
Tariffs do protect homegrown businesses, especially when there's a fear of dumping, as you have seen in Sankar's business, in Sanmar's business. Tariffs are inherently self-defeating, as they raise the cost for companies and they raise the cost for consumers that rely on imports. This is the reason why U.S. consumer and business confidence has plummeted in recent times. Obviously, this had spillover effects across the globe. India's initial reactions on these tariffs have been pragmatic, fairly mature, and constrained. We are amongst the first nations, countries to commence negotiations with the U.S. on a trade deal, much, much before the April 2 nd announcement. Currently, India's focus remains on finalizing a bilateral trade agreement with the U.S.
Earlier, India had indicated that it was open to reduce the tariffs on around 55% of the goods India imports from the U.S., where the tariffs range between 5%-30%. Yet these negotiations are not yet finalized. Commenting on this is akin to shooting in the dark. Bilateral trade between India and the U.S. is just 4% of U.S. GDP, just 4%. This is considerably lower than the U.S. bilateral trade with Canada and Mexico, which accounts for 30% and 21% of U.S. GDP, respectively. We have a trade surplus with the U.S. of $46 billion, where we have a $60-odd billion deficit with China. Some reductions of tariffs and non-tariff barriers may, in fact, be good for India, which will spur the country to focus on improving competitiveness and will help bring in greater efficiencies.
India is also likely to benefit from global value chains shifting from China. One of the strategic sectors is semiconductors, where the U.S. has indicated it wants to work with allies and also shift dependence on Taiwan and South Korea, as the U.S. intends to increase its own share in advanced fab manufacturing. India right now is focusing on low to middle-tech manufacturing, so it does not compete but complement the U.S.'s strategic focus. These initiatives will help India move manufacturing, which is today 17% of GDP, to about 25% of GDP in a few years. I'm sure you are aware, often spoken about the structural drivers of India's economic growth. We are an ancient country with a young population. 65% of our population today is under the age of 35. This compares well against the growing aging workforce globally.
India's IT service exports are estimated to be over $200 billion annually. Second, one underestimates India's vast availability of natural resources. The country has ample sunlight, which helps for renewables, availability of arable land, and ample availability of minerals such as manganese, iron ore, lithium, thorium, amongst others. Third is growing entrepreneurship, technology, and availability of many funding options, be it at the seed funding. There are many options of funding for young entrepreneurs. We have angel funds. We have startup funds, private equity funds like Fairfax, private credit alternate investment, and all are regulated in an environment which encourages companies to list and do an IPO. Last year, in 2024, India saw more IPOs in volume terms than the U.S., with 337 IPOs garnering about $20 billion. Even this year's IPO pipeline remains strong, with some large and marquee IPOs waiting in the wings.
Private equity investment also stands at $15 billion. This is across many sectors, as you have seen Fairfax investment. It varies from digital communication, transport, mobility, financial services, healthcare, real estate. More importantly, India is being seen favorably by investors for its ease of providing exits to private equity players. I have not heard any private equity players in India complain about difficulty in exits. Tax has to be paid. If they are willing to pay tax, exits are easy. Last year, there were about 282 exits by private equity players, global private equity players. The money remitted out was $27 billion. My view is that one is seeing both the government and regulators being significantly more determined to reverse signs of slowdowns, which I think are transitory, and working to alleviate the same.
In the financial budget in 2025, the Finance Minister increased the threshold limit of tax, thereby giving the middle class more money to spend on to increase consumption. Food grain production in India is all-time high at 330 million tons. Retail inflation, because of better harvest, has come down to 3.6%. With the rural sector picking up against the backdrop of robust agricultural growth, increased government spending, and strong boost to tourism, the government is expecting the growth to revive, which has slowed down last year. Tax collections have been very buoyant. GST collections have been buoyant year after year. Income tax collections are growing at 20% a year with lower tax rates. Similarly, the GST, which was introduced, is growing rapidly, double digits year -on -year. 100 gigawatts of solar install capacity has been installed, 100 GW in 1 million households with rooftop solar installations.
Demand for housing continues to be healthy. Commercial real estate is booming, and so is the market of REITs, Real Estate Investment Trusts. India remains a preferred destination for global capability centers. We've seen 1,500 U.S. companies set up global capability centers in India, 1,500. This is moving away from the back office call center, which were there earlier. There has been relentless selling by foreign portfolio investors, and I'm sure Fairfax has seen that. The dollar strength. The months of January and February saw liquidity in the system getting extremely tight. The Reserve Bank has, through a series of open market operations, foreign exchange swaps, and lowering interest rates, eased the situation. In the first three months of this calendar year, $13 billion of equities have been sold by foreign institutions.
All of that has been taken up by domestic mutual funds, domestic life insurance companies, insurance companies, pension funds, and retail investors. What will distinguish India in the future? India will be watched closely on its intent to focus on deregulation and ease of doing business. These are our main points. The central bank, we have a new central bank governor, Reserve Bank of India governor. He has publicly stated that he is trying his best to improve ease of doing business. Similarly, we have a new capital market chairperson, SEBI, we call it the Securities and Exchange Board, very recently appointed. He mentions the same thing, that I want to see more transparency. I want to see increased reaction approval process from us.
Similarly, the Chief Economic Advisor called the central and state governments to get out of the way of private sector. The Finance Minister has also announced a national task force on deregulation. She has included a number of prominent people on that committee. During the financial year last year, India got about $62 billion of FDI in key sectors being renewables, communications, semiconductors. External relationships have been cordial. Prime Minister Modi has assured political stability. We have fiscal stability. We have economic stability. So far, as stability is concerned, I think we have never had it so good in major sectors as we see it today. Lower prices of oil helps India tremendously because India buys about 70% of its oil requirements. We are now sourcing oil from 39 countries globally. Finally, I think I agree with Ben when he said, "I continue to remain extremely optimistic about India's future." While Fairfax India has completed a decade in India, I'm confident that the next 10 years will be significantly more exciting and significantly more rewarding. Thank you for giving me an opportunity.
Thank you very much, Deepak. He just got in all the way from India yesterday, so we appreciate him coming. Now we're going to open it up to you, our shareholders, for questions. We have two mics in the room. One there, Deanna is in charge of that one. We have Denise at mic two. Jeff, Stacy, if you have any questions you want to email, we'll be over there in the corner of the room. We have our fourth mic, which is for our presidents and directors. If we call upon you to answer a question, you can answer it right here near the podium. Thank you. We'll go to mic one.
Good morning, Ben. Charles Fischer from Seattle. First of all, I'd like to say that I really appreciate this expanded format that you did this year, expanding the annual meeting more to a sort of investor presentation. I think it's really appreciated by all the folks here. We just got back. About 20 of us went on the Fairfax India trip. The hosts and the presentations were spectacular. Sumit, Gopal, Kassi, Manoj could not have been better hosts for the people on the trip. Thank you for your support and how much goes on behind the scenes to make that trip work. As we sit here today, Ben, there's a lot of pieces moving in the world. India seems to be in a very unique situation. You have kind of relations with all different parts of the world. India seems uniquely qualified and positioned to do well in this kind of mixed-up universe that we're in. We're just thinking about the mark on the airport and the progress that Hari has made there and the valuation. You must have a certain—I mean, obviously, we just watched a presentation. You must have a certain amount of inherent confidence in the outlook of both India and Fairfax India. I know I'm being a bit repetitious to what your presentation was, but maybe you can expand on it a little bit more.
Yes, India is in a unique position because it gets along with Ray Dalio talks about this, right? Where when there's a rising power challenging an existing power, the country that does best is one that gets along with both sides. India gets along with both China and, to some extent, to China and also in the BRICS, because they have their own summit. It gets along with China there and then also with the U.S. here. One thing that when Prime Minister Modi came to meet with President Trump in February, they discussed something called Mission 500. Deepak talked about that there was $130 billion in bilateral trade. Mission 500 is by the year 2030, they want to have $500 billion in bilateral trade. There is no other country in the world that can get to that level, hundreds of billions, triple their trade with the U.S. during mostly President Trump's term. I think they are looked at very favorably in their environment.
I think India is in a very good position to benefit from that relationship. Also, China plus one. If you look at it, India has probably got one of the lowest tariff rates in all of Asia. Actually, Apple has just announced that they're going to try to—they're doing about 25 million of their iPhones being produced in India in 2025. That's about—iPhone is about half of Apple's revenue, right? The iPhones shipping from China are more expensive now, much more expensive. If they're hit with an additional 50%, that's 104. It's going to add a lot to an iPhone. Manufacturing in India is a big advantage. The China plus one strategy accelerates it. We saw it in the first Trump presidency where there was more of an urgency to build that dual supply chain.
I think the Biden administration kept those tariffs in on China. This will accelerate it more. We think India is in a very good position here. In terms of the airport, we showed you what was going on there in terms of the growth to get to 100 million. Perhaps we can have Hari update because to get to 100 million, if you look at the Atlanta airport, when it got to 105 million, from 40 to 100, that was 38 years. Hari's planning to do it in 15. You need operational excellence to do it that quickly. I think it would be great to hear maybe from Hari to give us an update maybe on how the airport's doing. What does it take to get from 8 million to 40 million passengers and then 40 to 100 million? Maybe that story might be good as well for Charles to hear. Also, thank you for your comments on the trip because it is a lot of planning. We appreciate that you took the time to go on it as well.
Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here as usual every year at this time. Ben, thank you for that brilliant presentation on the India growth story and Mr. Parekh, yours as well because that really sets the tone for everything that we're talking about in the airport because airports are reflective of the economy itself. What you really see in the economy is what you see in the airport. Airports are known to be barometers of the economy. Airports or aviation in general and the economy have a symbiotic relationship.
The better the economy does, the more aviation grows. As aviation grows, it has a huge multiplier effect on the economy as well. Every dollar invested in aviation has a 6.5x impact on the economy. In the first 10 years of the existence of Bangalore Airport, the impact it has had on the economy is stunning. In 2019, we commissioned a study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research just to look at the kind of economic impact Bangalore Airport has had on the Bangalore region. Just in terms of gross economic value added, Bangalore Airport has impacted the economy by $10 billion a year. That is the impact of the economic impact of the airport. From an employment standpoint, direct, indirect, induced impact is a little over 300,000 jobs that it has created since inception, which is a very powerful tale.
Of course, for all the reasons that you and Mr. Parekh laid out about the kind of economic activity that's happening in India, combined with the unique demographics that we have in India of a youthful population, specifically the nature of economic activity that's happening in Bangalore, which is the capital of the knowledge economy, which means that it has a very, very large, the largest share of urban migrant labor is in Bangalore, all of this leads to a large amount of aviation travel. Youngsters earning a lot of money, higher disposable income, seeking experiences, seeking travel experiences, going back home at least twice a year, all of that leads to a huge amount of travel. That's the background and the basis of which Bangalore Airport continues to be amongst the fastest growing airports in the country.
We touched 40.7 million last calendar year and 41.88 million for the financial year that ended in FY2025. We are expected to continue this growth trajectory over the next few years. While we will touch 100 million in 15 years, the more challenging part is that we will actually touch 80 million in the next seven years. That is even more difficult because once you touch 80 million, growth will tend to slow down, and that will give you better possibility to cater to that growth between 80 and 100. From 40 to 80, doubling of volumes in the next seven years is going to be, I think, the bigger challenge that we face. How do we propose to do that? I mean, there are three or four things that we are doing to enable us.
I think this is a question that keeps us awake, literally on a daily basis. Me and my team, this is what we are discussing all the time. How do we make sure that we prepare? Because this is not just growth in scale, but it's also tremendous growth in complexity. Because the number of moving parts in an airport, the number of vehicles, the number of people, as it grows in that 4,000-acre campus, it leads to a higher degree of complexity. The kind of people that we have in our teams today are not ready to face this kind of complexity. They're not trained to handle this kind of complexity. There are three, four things that we're doing right now. First of all, add physical capacity.
We need to create the capacity to enable this growth. In October 2023, we completed a $1.7 billion expansion program, which added Terminal 2, which everyone's been talking about, but also a second runway and many of the associated other infrastructure that is required to cater to this growth. In February 2024, six months later, we were asking the board for approval for another round of expansion, capital program, $2.2 billion, this time to create capacity that's coming up with all these aircrafts in order that you referred to in your speech and Gopal referred to as well. There is a big expansion program coming up right now. This $2.2 billion is going to be spent on expanding Terminal 2 that we've built just now, the second half of it. We've built only half of Terminal 2. Phase 2 of Terminal 2 is coming up.
Roughly about $600 million will be spent on phase 2 of Terminal 2. We have two very large infrastructure projects. One is an underground tunnel that brings in traffic from the eastern side of the city into the airport, which is passing underneath aircraft parking stands and taxiways and bringing them into the Terminal 4 court, plus a massive crossfield taxiway that connects the two runways at the other end. We are connected only at the eastern end right now. A western crossfield taxiway enables full circularity on the airside, improving efficiencies, improving aircraft turnaround times, improving, of course, the shorter taxiing times as well at the airport. These two projects will take up another $600 million-$700 million. We're building two metro stations. We're refurbishing the existing terminal, Terminal 1. Almost 50% of that project is already through.
We've awarded contracts close to $500 million already, and the rest will be spent in the next four years. Very, very aggressive. This kind of a project in any other part of the world would have taken anywhere between 10 and 12 years to build out. We're aiming to do that in the next four years. A large, large capital project coming up. That's just creation of physical capacity. The other important challenge is the people challenge. The people challenge we are trying to address through three ways. One, I think talent availability is going to be a big problem in India. We're already seeing a bankruptcy of talent in India. The quality of people available at this point of time is not up to the challenge that is coming up or the kind of complexity that's coming up.
We're trying over the next few years to focus on hiring the best possible talent that's there in the Indian market. We've been successful so far. We've got a fantastic team. I'm very proud of the high-quality team that we have at Bangalore Airport. Some of you have met many of our senior team leaders. We need several more, especially if you have the ambition of operating more airports. We need even more people. We are bidding for privatization of airports this year. If we acquire more airports, we need several more CEOs and senior leaders in those positions. Hiring of high-quality talent. Secondly, I think the existing teams need to be upskilled, and their skill levels need to be significantly improved. We've got two massive transformational programs that are going on right now, Fit for Future and Fit for Purpose.
These two programs are actually looking at what are the skill sets that are required for operating a complex airport environment 10 years from now or 7 years from now, identifying those skills and embedding those skills in these teams as we speak right now. Of course, retaining those people in the next seven years because we do not want them to leave. Embedding them with future skills and retaining those people is part two of the people challenge. Part three, of course, none of this is we cannot pull this off unless we have a high-quality culture, culture that believes in collaboration, partnership, trust, integrity, and all of that. The next two years, we put together a program that is meant to make sure that our culture becomes that much more stronger that we are able to handle the growth that is coming up.
Third piece of the preparatory works that we are doing to handle this 40 million-80 million challenge is to simplify and make our internal processes that much more efficient. Being in the technology capital of the country, we are blessed because we've got the best brains in the field. We are embedding a lot of technology. We've got four platforms that are enabling the digital transformation of our company. I've spoken of this in the past, but the latest one in this is use of AI and Gen AI in businesses. Things like digital finance, I think our finance is completely getting automated and digitized. Legal, procurement, all of these are getting powered by digital solutions, including AI and Gen AI. This is helping to transform the business to a point where many of these activities get automated.
For instance, regulatory filing once in five years takes a hell of a lot of work to put together. Now, of course, with the kind of tool that we are developing, which is state-of-the-art Gen AI-enabled regulatory tool, literally, it's a click of a button because it's integrated with almost every single digital platform that we have in the business. With a click of the button, we should be able to generate a multi-year tariff proposal. These are some of the things that we are doing to simplify the internal processes in the business. Last but not the least, when you're embarking on such a large expansion program, we saw when COVID happened. COVID happened exactly as we started the construction of Terminal 2. We have to be prepared for such black swan events.
Maintaining fiscal prudence, maintaining a healthy cash balance, making sure that we are running the business in a responsible fashion is a very important part of this. We have sort of refinancing of our loan right now and getting a seven-year moratorium on repayment is a big part of that plan that makes sure that we do not have stress as far as money is concerned as we grow over the next seven years. I think these are the four pillars along which we are hoping that this will sort of enable this move from 40 million to 80 million. I think that sort of encapsulates everything that we are doing.
Thank you very much, Hari.
Thank you.
Why do we not go to mic number two?
Congratulations, Ben, for your new role and fantastic format. My question is, Fairfax India clearly right now trades at a significant discount. You also talked about it in your presentation. What are some of the things that we can do? I know you're buying back a lot of stock, which is great. You're organizing India trip, which is great. What else in your mind are some of the opportunities you have to close the gap between where the value at which Fairfax India trades versus where the value which you would reflect, which is the NAV, and even that does not reflect the Bangalore International Airport value that we talked about? What are some of the tools or things that you're thinking of that will help us unlock some of the value that exists in the stock price?
Right now, 72% of the assets are private. They are sort of fixed at their level. When we explored the Anchorage idea, that would have taken us from, I think, 36% to 80-something percent in terms of public assets. The price discovery would have been in the market rather than us taking the value up on private assets. That is one thing that we have explored. That might be an opportunity actually for Sumit to give us an update on what is going on with Anchorage, actually. That is one of the big things. Buybacks are, of course, as we showcased, one of the strong things that we can do when it is a discount to book.
Thank you, Ben. This is one question I did not want to answer, but thank you for putting me on the spot. Thank you for your question. I remember we were talking outside about Anchorage as well. The interesting part is it is taking an unusually long time to get this approval, and we'll come into that. We did not expect this level of complexity going through the bureaucracy of India. Usually, bureaucracy is much more receptive. Across all our work, they are very supportive. Multiple times, both Ben, Gopal, and Deepak also referred that governments are getting out of the way of the private sector. For some reason, we are taking time. Now, to give you a very simple idea about where we are in the process, in India, holding companies owned by foreign owners get into a complicated area.
Given the size of Bangalore Airport as an underlying asset, thereby the size of Anchorage, and the nature of the asset, which is airport, which is generally a monopolistic asset and asset of national importance in some sense, is kind of adding to the complexity over there. Now, for many of these reasons, the approval for IPO of Anchorage has to come from something called a Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs, which is the apex committee of the country. For this particular, I mean, this committee is headed by the Prime Minister himself and the other constituents of this particular committee: Finance Ministry, Defense Ministry, Home Ministry, etc. In the priority of various, or I mean, in their list of priorities, they have national defense as an idea, tariffs, for example, geopolitics, internal politics, internal disturbances or opportunities. Amongst all of this, we have something called IPO of Anchorage. It is getting that much of importance. That is the honest answer, I would say. Nobody even once has said that there is a problem and it will not happen. In the given priority order, we are fairly low there. At some point in time, we will get up there. It will take a little time. That is an honest answer. Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks, Sumit. I would just say our businesses, 11 of the 13, like Gopal pointed out, are compounding at 15% plus for the last five years. If you are a long-term shareholder, this is the chance to keep accumulating before the market discovers that it is trading at a discount to book. That would be my addition as well. Jeff, why do you not go to you and if there are any questions online?
Yes, a further follow-up on BIAL. The Karnataka government has formally proposed three potential sites for a second international airport near Bengaluru. BIAL and the government have an exclusive 150 km radius in their agreements about the BIAL airport. Has the airport been involved in these discussions for another airport? What are the remedies that Fairfax India would receive if an airport is built within that radius?
Thank you for the question. What they're referring to, I think, is that they're trying to build a second airport, but we have exclusivity till, I think, 2033. Is that right? Yeah, 2033. By that time, like Hari was saying, we might be through 80 million passengers at that time. We might want that second airport because we want to keep the higher revenue traffic within BIAL and then offload the other traffic to the second airport because we'll be bursting at the seams. I don't know if Hari, do you want to expand on that? Sure. Thanks.
Yes, there's been a lot of news around the second airport in Bangalore. Added to that is also there's been this conversation about the old HAL airport being revived. There's a whole lot of this conversation that's been going on in the press. Maybe I can just throw some light on that. First and foremost, I think we're fully involved in the discussions. We're with the state government. We're very close partners with the state government. Therefore, the state government trusts us and involves us in all these discussions.
Like you rightly pointed out, Ben, our exclusivity is till 2033. By then, we will be at about 85 million. At that stage, what one must remember is that all the peak hours will be full. It is really between 85 and 15 million. That growth is coming from filling up the valleys, right? The city is already choking at that point of time because there is a need for further capacity. That capacity is going to come only with the second airport. We are aiding the government. We were involved in the selection of those three sites. We recommended our favorite out of those three sites because we believe that one works best. Of course, it is for the central government to decide what is going to happen. At all points of time in this discussion, what we are trying to do is protect our interests.
At no point will we allow our interests to be diluted. HAL airport too, if it has to be reopened, our stance has been that we will operate HAL airport. As far as HAL airport is concerned, we have the right till 2038 because that is actually till the end of the first concession period, which is the 30-year concession period. We have the right till 2038, which is 13 years from now. The 150 km exclusivity ends in 2033. We continue to engage very closely with the government, and we will ensure that at the end of it, whatever the outcome is positive for us.
Thank you, Hari. Now we will go back to mic number one where Deanna is.
Hi, Ben and Gopal. Thank you so much for having us. It is wonderful to come back here every year. Congratulations on your new role this year. My name is Gobinath. I come from Washington, DC, long-term shareholder of Fairfax India and Fairfax. My question is two different areas and maybe simpler ones than the previous questions, I guess. The first one is the second largest investment for Fairfax India other than the airport is banking and finance, mostly on the lending side. What is the prime risk that you're concerned and watchful for? The second question is, among the private company valuations that you guys are carrying certain businesses, for example, Seven Islands Shipping is you're carried at like four times free cash flow versus the airport is carried at, let's say, 12 times EBITDA. What kind of leeways do you guys have to carry these? What limits that you may impose on them over time? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. On finance, actually, we have Pralay here. Pralay has got 30 years of banking experience. He is at CSB Bank. The bank is over 100 years old now. Pralay was the head of retail banking at a large bank as well that was over $40 billion. He has had 12 years of experience at HDFC. I think he would be good to give some perspective of why we are very interested in banking and why he left his role at a large bank and joined the opportunity at CSB. I think that would be interesting for you to hear. He could also probably expand on anything he is concerned on right now as well in the banking sector. We will take the Seven Islands question after and valuation.
Good morning, everybody. Privileged to be here. Thank you for the question. On the question, Ben, what we asked is, yes, I have been a part of very large journeys, whether it's 12 years in HDFC Bank and large time in another mid-sector and then another large sector. The reason of me joining the Fairfax-promoted company, CSB, was this is not the first time, with all humility, I can say that I have done it two times before. It may sound bizarre as it is, but when I had joined HDFC Bank, I had joined from a foreign bank. I was getting international posting. I was told that you must be mad to join a bank which is late 1990s, that time HDFC Bank. I wondered what I'd tell him when we say that that bank is now one of the largest banks in the world.
The second example also, again, which is 10 times bigger than us at this point of time. That bank was much smaller in retail, what I was handling that time, besides what we already are. I think it's a question of perspective. It's a question of what you want to do. This question was asked to me by a London investor when I was in my previous organization. I said that there are two kinds of people. One is you want to build something. You want to run something. From that perspective. The third is you want to turn around something. In this company, we had two opportunities. One is building something and turning around a company. Third, of course, is scaling will happen if we do all the right things.
On that front, before I talk about the risk point, which you just talked about, because banking is all about taking risk and managing risk. There are three, four things which we are doing in CSB at this point of time. I explained last year that SBS 2030 Sustain Build Scale three phases. We divided what we want to do. The good part is sustain part is over. The build part is almost getting over. As we're talking, we are doing the technology transformation. Our partners, whether it is Oracle or Deloitte and many other partners, they actually cautioned saying that, "Are you sure you want to do all of it together? This is a big risk." No bank has done it before.
We said that not doing it is a bigger risk because we have a limited time of the next four-five years within which we are to scale the bank to a very different league to the mid-sector. The good news is that as we are talking, we are actually transitioning our core system, the surround system, into a digital system, everything around it. When you ask the question of risk, it's just not credit risk, execution risk, process risk, technology risk, all of that. We are building the bank on five pillars at this point of time. One is, of course, governance. With a Fairfax-promoted company, we do not question that. Number two is the culture, which Hari also talked about. That is very, very important when we want to build a long-term vision for an institution. People, culture, human capital, all of this is important.
We are building that. The third part, of course, is technology, which I talked about. The simplest way of saying what we are doing in the bank is whatever we will have in this bank one year from now, nothing was in the bank three years back, in terms of technology. We will be ahead of the curve just because we are taking the latest and the best, whether it's Oracle, whether it's the OBDS platform, whether it's a database, everything will be the latest. Our size is called small, so leveraging that will be that much easier. From that perspective, we are building for the next 10 years and beyond. The fourth, of course, is customers because one of my ex-bosses, and Deepak is sitting here. I mean, he has been a mentor to all of us in HDFC.
One of my ex-senior colleagues, Paresh, is also somewhere here, I'm sure. I've learned from, and my ex-boss, Aditya Puri, he used to say that you cannot build a bank without customers. That's the fourth pillar, which is how to acquire and how to get customers in the bank, which you don't have today enough. We want to build. For that, you need product, process, service, and customer service, then the ecosystem, the entire things put together. All of that we are building, and that requires technology in today's world. That's the fourth pillar. The fifth, of course, is compliance. Globally, and not only in India, compliance has become very important while it is an independent function, but I myself am very much involved into this.
Across these five pillars, we are building, and hopefully, this will remain our vision for the next decades to come because these are the five pillars which will not go away. That is where we are. The bank has grown, as we saw. As we talk, we just finished our quarter. Last quarter, we grew by 30% when the system has grown by 11% on the asset side. Hopefully, we will be able to sustain that because the real journey of the bank will start from next year once the technology piece is in place. That is about CSB. My colleague, Narendra Dixit, is sitting there. I just say that the prosperity, we have brought prosperity because those dias which you see there actually is something which we worship, and we believe that this is the road to prosperity.
With the core system being in place this year, we believe that we are on the road to prosperity going ahead in the bank. I would encourage some of you to carry some of our brochures and the prosperity which was there in the goody bag out there. Home, it's a beautiful thing to have. Coming to your question now specifically on risk, yes, I mean, there are various risks. You have liquidity risk, which we saw in the last quarter, last six months. Today was the RBI announcement. RBI has been doing a lot of work in the last few weeks or months in terms of managing liquidity. The good news is the liquidity in the positive domain right now. We had a reported cut today morning India time.
There is a positive commentary on the inflation, which is within the RBI kind of a comfort. From that perspective, I think that part we should be able to manage as a country. Coming to credit risk, I think a little bit on the unsecured microfinance, there's a little bit of a risk that is evolving. The bigger piece, which happened post-GFC and till 2012, 2013, and that carried along in some of the larger banks, especially on the PSU side, was on the corporate side, right? I think that deleveraging has happened out there. From a systemic side, while there are some risks emerging a little bit on the retail side, unsecured microfinance and some of this, that's very transient risk in my view.
There are much better systems and capabilities right now, governance, regulatory processes by which those risks are capped to a great extent. Having said that, brings to the third risk, which is there in the banking ecosystem, and it's, I think, across the globe, not only banking, across is the cybersecurity risk. From that perspective, the inter-investment, a lot of investments are going into cybersecurity to manage those kinds of risks in the banking. That's a large risk because it's a systemic risk. Fourth, of course, is ensuring the overall governance risk because however rudimentary it sounds, that's the biggest risk because if there are governance risks, which leads to, what should I say, the reputational risk of institutions. Banking is a business of trust.
When I was in HDFC, I used to see this, that trust is the topmost thing in terms of when it comes to brand of any bank. That is something which is also a big risk. When you look at all of this together, I think eventually it's the governance and the board direction and how the management operates decides how the bank will be long-term and how do we manage this risk on that front. That's in a nutshell where we are. We are very, very encouraged and very, very excited. The entire team is very excited because while we grew by 30% last quarter on a year-on-year basis, and as we saw in the presentation, we grew by 25% on the calendar year, I think our journey is just beginning. With the technology transformation, which is happening this year, we have the best people as we can think in the organization. Everybody has come with a vision, with a dream. I think it's just a question of time we'll execute what we saw in the three other banks where I've worked before. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Thank you, Pralay. Thank you, Pralay. On the Seven Islands, the leeway with the valuation. Actually, Gopal . I just wanted to address that.
Before I go there, just to complete, I mean, Parle made about the bank. When it comes to finance, I mean, other finance company also we have IIFL Finance. Our general message to the management is, I mean, being very prudent in lending and manage, I mean, take risk, but understand the risk and manage risk very well. On the other side, in order to gain a better competitive advantage, one has to focus on the cost of funds. How do you drive the cost of funds? Everything, it all revolves back to how you manage your risk, how you all your practices, processes that you adopt over time. That is what determines. For example, IIFL Finance, a few years back, they used to be a domestic AA- . They migrated to AA, and they were on the verge of getting upgraded to AA+ . Of course, this gold loan-related stuff happened, so they are stuck at AA. Our messaging is pretty much lower the cost of funds, you have a better ability to lend to the best quality borrowers. That is on the finance side.
Your other question was about the Seven Islands and other private investments that we have, the smaller companies you were saying. In case of Seven Islands, you have seen it is a great cash-generating company. In fact, whenever we do not find appropriate, like for example, right now, they did not find appropriate to deploy in more ships at these elevated valuations. Therefore, there was a huge dividend payout. In the month of December itself, we got about $30 million. Depending upon their strong cash-generating businesses, we will weigh on depending upon the opportunities that come from the business side, either it will get deployed and there are growth opportunities of what they see, or it will get dividend out. Some of the other companies, they are growing well. We do not want them to be right now listed. There is an opportunity maybe at some point in time, some of these companies can get publicly floated. For now, I think we would rather let the management's bandwidth be more focused on driving the business to a sizable so that it can be a great value unlocking potential going forward.
Thank you for your questions. Denise, mic two. Thanks.
Good morning, Ben and Gopal. Thanks very much for the excellent presentation. My question is around future opportunities. In the past, management has spoken about opportunities in the future privatization of government-owned assets. Are you still seeing this as a potential future opportunity for Fairfax India? If so, what is the company doing to make sure it is best positioned to take advantage of these sorts of opportunities?
Yeah. I think you have seen last time when they were privatizing the airports, we also participated, but we participated with discipline. We were outbid by more than, I don't want to say by what number, but substantially outbid. It didn't make any sense for us to bid at those valuations. Government has been talking about many privatizations, infrastructure assets, more airports. Another 12 or 13 airports are likely to come up now. We are evaluating, I mean, whatever that comes up. The infrastructure divestment, especially when it comes to roads and other assets, they have been a little slow. They've been saying because so far, I think the budget has been, I mean, allowing them to spend out of budget for the infrastructure. Now, as things are changing politically, we are seeing some kind of tuning of more and more social spending.
Like one of the recently, there was a news that one of the state government ran out of funds to even pay their salaries because of the increase in the social spending. Therefore, we have always seen governments when they are pushed to a corner and when there is a crisis, then the response is far more. I am sure with the direction in which we are going, I think you will see more assets getting divested. Therefore, there will be a lot more opportunities for us. Especially with this given global volatile environment, I feel the opportunities will be even more. We will weigh all the options and we will respond. We stick to our discipline. I mean, if it is going to be outbid, let it be. No problems. Because the way we got BIAL itself, it wasn't that 2007 or 2008 when all those airports were privatized. We got it subsequently when the bidders who won those airports those days, they ran into trouble. That's the time we went in and bought. Our approach will be very disciplined.
Jeff, do you have any questions from online?
Yes, we have a two-part question about IIFL. The first one on IIFL Finance and then a second question on IIFL Capital. The first one on IIFL Finance, has the recent gold loan investigation by the RBI hurt the long-term momentum or reputation of IIFL Finance in any way?
We're fortunate enough to have Venkat here from IIFL. He's one of the key people at the company. Nirmal is the other key person, but was not able to make it today. Venkat has been with IIFL Finance since 1999. Maybe, Venkat, you could just provide an answer on that investigation. Also, maybe just a little bit of an update on where you stand today. Yeah.
Thank you, Ben and Gopal. Thank you, everybody. It's good to be here. Thank you, Prem and Chandran, for your continued support. Our relationship goes back almost 15 years. Thank you for everything. Coming to this specific question on gold loans, and Gopal spoke about it in his presentation. In March of 2024, RBI banned us from booking new business. For almost four to five months, we worked very closely with the Reserve Bank of India. We shared a lot of data with them and reworked and rejigged all our processes. There was also a special audit done by them. In September, we were allowed to restart our gold loan business. The good thing about this entire embargo was that the book actually fell down from almost $3 billion to close to $1.25 billion in the six months of the ban. Subsequently, after the ban was lifted, we have been able to recoup most of the lost book. It shows that our brand with the customers was intact. Most of the customers came back to us. All the branches started re-getting all the loans back. As we speak, our book has now regrown. Although it has not reached the peak of March 31, 2024, it is almost reaching there. The book is now close to almost $2.25 billion. That shows that our brand, as well as our customer acquisition engine, is intact.
I think with God's grace and your blessings and support, we'll soon overtake the past numbers. A quick talk about IIFL Finance. As you know, in the last three years or four years, the entire organization has been very focused on the retail side of the business. We have a very strong position in gold loans. The average ticket size of the gold loan is about $1,000. In spite of the ban, in spite of the embargo, we have been able to quickly get back our competitive position. The book is showing upward growth momentum back. In housing finance, which is again a significant portion of our book, we are a significant player in the affordable housing segment. This is one of the objectives of the Prime Minister, Housing for All, Prime Minister Awas Yojana.
The average ticket size will be close to about $20,000. We are present in this tier two, tier three, or the suburbs of metros. Mr. Parekh is there, who's the doyen of the Indian housing finance sector. We do not compete with him because obviously he's in the superior segment. We cater to this tier two, tier three, suburbs of big locations to, I would say, the so-called not prime segment. We also have a business loan, which the average ticket size is about $4,000-$5,000. We provide both secured as well as unsecured credit to business, primarily targeted at working capital and acquisition of small machines. 50% of the book is secured because we give loan against property for business. We have a microfinance business. That business was at about $2 billion.
In the last one year, the book has regrown because of this entire stress phase in the industry. This is unsecured loans to the bottom of the pyramid. We think that the last two or three quarters, this entire segment had some stress because of repayment issues. We think the sector is slowly getting out of the problems. Maybe this quarter, we'll see the worst of this asset quality issues. From next quarter onwards, we'll see growth momentum back. All in all, I think Ben spoke about the growth potential in the Indian financial services sector. Mr. Parekh also talked about the growth potential in the sector. We think that the entire sector, given the low credit penetration in the economy, has significant headroom for growth. Given the fact that we are retail-oriented, we have significant distribution infrastructure all across the country.
The fact that we leverage technology a lot, we have taken full benefit of this entire India tech stack with, be it Aadhaar or be it the credit rating or be it digital payments. We are well positioned to actually benefit from the entire growth momentum. Long-term potential is very good. There might be short-term problems given the fact that last one year, the regulator has been looking at this unsecured book very closely. There has been a lot of, I would say, challenges, not only company-specific, but also sector-specific. We think there are short-term blips in the long-term growth story. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Venkat. Jeff, you said there was a question on IIFL Capital now.
The second part of the IIFL question is, does the current robust business environment for securities, trading, and investment banking show any signs of cooling or slowing down? What would be the impact on IIFL Capital?
Perfect. You know what, Venkat? We've got Nem here. Why don't we have Nem give us maybe a capital markets update, what you're seeing, IPOs, and a little bit of color on the market, Nem. Thank you. Thank you, Venkat.
Actually, last four years, particularly the last 18-24 months, have been surreal, actually. There are weeks where we launched three IPOs. It's never happened in the past. To assume that kind of a cyclical uplift that we saw will sustain, given the change in the environment that we are seeing, I think maybe a difficult one in the next 12 months or so. One thing I can tell you, what Ben and Gopal alluded to in terms of the long-term trajectory of this business, I remember in my 30 years, I've seen the Asian crisis, then the tech bust, then the 2008 crisis. In between, we had the 2013 crisis. All through, what we have seen is that the long-term market opportunity continues to expand significantly. Over time, Indian capital market volumes have grown significantly. The investment banking pie has grown significantly. What we are also trying to do is that we are adding new business lines to ensure that the cyclicality of the business, the transactional share of the business, keeps coming down. You would have seen that we've recently started the wealth management business, both on the ultra H&I and, more importantly, on the mass affluence side. We've already hired a very large team.
Gopal mentioned about the wealth opportunity being about a trillion dollars. We are very, very confident. I still distinctly remember in 2008, 2009, with just a few million dollars, we started the 361 business. Today, that business commands a market cap of close to $4 billion. We are very confident that we will be able to build a very large wealth management business, given the kind of track record and credibility we have. Yes, the short answer is that next 12 months does not look as good as it was in the last two years or so. Growth may slow down. I am very confident that we are very conservative in terms of our capital deployment. Even in the worst of the times, we have generated 18%-19% ROE. Last year, we generated close to 35% ROE. We do not need capital to grow. It's a highly cash-flow generating business. We are on a strong wicket. We continue to, our focus will continue to remain, create value over the long term.
Thank you, Nem. I see two people standing in mic one. They're the only people in the room. I guess we only have time for probably those two questions. Let's just use mic one and address those two questions.
Thank you, Ben. My name is Ashvin Moorjani. I'm with Edward Jones. My first question is related to potential opportunities to deploy capital, either in the private or public markets. The second part of my question relates to sources of capital. Looking at what you did with Helios, what's done with Helios right now in terms of raising a fund to deploy capital domestically in Africa, is there any opportunities that you see for yourself where you can set up some type of GPLP structure, bring on perhaps some of your institutional relationships as LPs, or even domestic India, given your banking relationships that have distribution, to perhaps use that generation of fee income and also deploy in a bigger amount, have a greater capital base to deploy into new opportunities? That's my question. Thank you.
Thank you. I think we'll bring up for deploying more capital. Maybe Sumit can give some ideas of what's on the ground. I just say on raising a third-party vehicle, if there's opportunity, the money will be there. If we see it, we're going to take advantage of any opportunity we see in markets. Sumit, you can go ahead.
The joke internally is whenever we need capital, we have to make one phone call to Prem. Prem, we need money. Prem says, okay, here is the money. Now do what you want. Availability of capital, I do not think is a problem for us. The problem on the ground is to find high-quality investment opportunities. If we were to deploy capital purely for the, you just mentioned, for generating fees, etc., there are many opportunities. We can deploy billions of dollars on the ground. You heard the entire presentation on the India opportunities. We can deploy tons of capital over there.
The real challenge is to find folks like these who are sitting right here, all our presidents who are running very strong operations, high margins, cash flow focused, high on integrity, high on values. Some of these guys are not going to like what I'm going to say next at a fair entry price. That is where it becomes challenging. As you would know, Indian markets are fairly highly valued right now. Capital markets are buzzing. There is a ton of liquidity in the market. A lot of money chasing a very limited set of opportunities. The kind of businesses we passed on, we did not like those. Eventually, they went public at much higher valuations. We went back and rechecked our own thesis, whether we committed mistakes and we missed seeing anything. We were clear once they went public. Over time, the quality showed up.
The high valuations did not stack up. Long story short, we again see a ton of deal flow, about 300-400 odd companies in a year. We stay focused on we have got set parameters, high-quality promoters. Very easy to go wrong with people. One thing what we do very well on the ground in India is to do background checks. We spend a lot of time on finding high-quality partners for ourselves, high-quality businesses where the business model has settled. We look at at least 10-12 years of free cash flow generation profile in the past, not in the future. Finally, a fair entry price so that everybody's happy sitting in the room. I think that's what I would say, Ben. We'll find opportunities. As the capital markets are coming down, we'll find more opportunities right now.
Trouble is opportunity, right? John Templeton quote there. We'll take the last question from mic one.
Hello. I'm Saurabh Pinker. I've been a shareholder since the IPO of Fairfax India, and also Fairfax for a very long time. Really happy to see the first time here coming to our meeting. Just like sort of, I guess it's the last question. Reflection of the last 10 years, a lot of times we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. Anything, mistakes of commissions or omissions you would like to share with us? Also specifically, one question about IIFL asset management. They have a mutual fund business. It's been around for a very long time. Given the backdrop of the financial sector in India, how do we see that going forward? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the question. Probably to reflect on that would be Gopal might be better because he's been involved the full 10 years. Before Gopal answers that, I thought it might be interesting. NCML has been one of Fairfax India's great learning experiences. That's given us the opportunity to be introduced to Sanjay Gupta. That was our first, I think, our first investment, right? NCML. That was our first investment. It's probably been one of the most challenging. I think hearing Sanjay talk to us and tell us how he's turned around that company would be quite interesting. Maybe, Sanjay, you could just give us a little perspective on how you've turned around the company.
One thing that I would say is that our patience and our ability to last through a long period of time can turn something that might have been a mistake, and yet we're in a high-growth environment like this, it can turn out to be possibly a big winner over the long term. Sanjay will talk about some of the changes he's made at NCML. I don't know, Gopal, if you have any reflections that you could add after Sanjay is done.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm going to talk about NCML. NCML, as Ben mentioned, was the first investment Fairfax India made in India. It didn't turn out the way it was envisaged. In fact, it's been very, very bad. There is a silver lining to everything, as I say. The silver lining in this was the opportunity to be able to take very tough decisions. That is what the team at NCML seized upon. In the past three years, we have been able to take some very tough decisions and led a quiet transformation of the business. If you were to ask me how we were able to do it, there were just two words. First of all, what is focus? The other one, waste elimination. Please do not go by the literal meaning of the word waste. By waste, I mean use it as a metaphor for anything which does not add value to the business. Elimination of that. Focus, we at NCML said in 2022 and asked ourselves three questions. First of all, what businesses do we want to be in? What kind of customers do we want to deal with?
What kind of employee behavior do we need to deal with these customers to give us a preeminent position in the same? These were the three questions we sat. Why we asked this question? At that time, NCML had 10 business verticals, which was not justified for the kind of size the size of business NCML has. At the end of this exercise, we were able to eliminate five businesses. Five businesses went out of the window. We decided to focus on five remaining businesses. Another key elephant in the room was the silo projects. We were awarded 16 silo projects after NCML was taken over by Fairfax. This was a huge financial commitment. We realized it sooner that we were not in a position to complete all those.
We took the hard decision, surrendered nine to the Government of India back, and decided to focus on the remaining seven. In 2022, we had just one of these seven silos ready. Let me come to what has happened in the past two years. In the last two years, we have been able to complete six silos out of these seven and hand it over to FCI. The one remaining is a challenge, as an engineering challenge, because we are trying to build the largest rice silo in the world. As of now, there is no proven design or technology how these silos can operate. There is a lot of R&D involved, which has led to this kind of a delay. We are very sure that in the next two-three months, we will be able to hand it over to FCI again.
With this, our commitment to FCI and the stakeholders will be over. In terms of coming back to the main business of NCML, we have been able to eliminate a lot of cost. A lot of wasteful activities, as I said, have gone out of the window. Now, in the past three years, if you were to look at our financial performance, our top line has grown by 22% year -on -year for the past three years. Our EBITDA, or the bottom line, has grown by 70% year on year. In fact, in the last five years, if you were to look at what our EBITDA was in 2021, and as we speak here in 2025, India, we follow the financial year of April to March, our EBITDA this year is four times what it was in 2021. This year, this is a kind of a transformation we have been able to achieve at NCML. I hope this journey is still not complete and we'll continue to do much better in the coming years. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Sanjay. Thank you. We own 91% of that business. Gopal?
Reflecting on the last 10 years' journey, what we have demonstrated in the market is we always said Fairfax India is a permanent capital, long-term investing, patient capital. We have always demonstrated, I mean, NCML was one example. If you go back to 2018 or 2019 when IIF L de-merged all their businesses into three different companies when they got listed, especially that happened just after the IIFL crisis, where all NBFCs were derated in the market. When normally things, when you do such an enormous exercise of de-merging three different businesses, I mean, de-merging to three different businesses, you generally feel you will have the aggregate market cap of all the companies has to be far greater than the previous one. In this case, it was almost half of what was it. We stayed on. Now you have seen the end result of all those companies. If you see the market cap, as a group, IIF investment for us is now, in dollar terms, close to 18%-20%. That's one thing I would say. The other thing, when it comes to mistakes, I mean, in the investment world, I think all of us, regardless of what background we come from, what intelligence levels we have, and whatever we do, we do commit mistakes.
All that we try and accomplish is, I mean, it's always, I have seen even before I came here in another Fairfax entity where I was managing investments, we had a track record of being right 70% of the times. Prem also always keeps saying, even in Fairfax, that as long as you are right 70% of the times, I think the winners will take care of all the losers. Pretty much, I think in Fairfax India, if you see, I mean, you have seen the slide, and we have shown how our companies are growing. Two of the companies I said were under turnaround, but they're all backed by great investors, great promoters. I mean, in terms of integrity, in terms of their business culture, I think there's nothing to fault. I think it's more a matter of the business cycle. In some places, I mean, all of that you hear. We do learn from our mistakes, but I will also say we always aspire to learn from the others' mistakes. Sometimes life is such that you also learn from your own mistakes. I mean, you're made to make some mistakes, but we try to, that has been the approach, and that's how we will continue to approach this game.
Thank you, Gopal. Now I think our founder, Prem Watsa, wants to say a few words.
I've attended for 50 years annual meetings. Just like this, at the end, there'd be an old guy coming in and saying all sorts of good things about management. We would be sitting down, my 20s and 30s, he'd be laughing and smiling. It's just all a setup. Having said that, I did want to say, I am the old guy now. Both Ben and Gopal have done an outstanding job in a transition. Not easy. Give them a nice round of applause. I'll pass it back to Ben.
Okay. That is our meeting. Now, an event like this does not happen alone. I want to thank people in particular, the venue, the Ritz Carlton, all our Presidents and Directors, Gary and his team, Jen, Amy, Debbie and their team, Brad, John, Sumit and his team, of course, Prem and Chandran, and of course, Gopal, for all the assistance in making this a great event, not only for us, but I think for Canada and India, that two of our countries can work together and that we will continue to help Canadians and Americans wherever our shareholders come from to navigate India's opportunities. I wanted to thank everyone that took time to come here in the room and then listening online to hear our story. Fairfax India is a culmination of a lot of collective efforts. We think we have the best team to find ideas and problem-solve solutions together.
Over the long term, Fairfax India offers a vehicle for global capital to invest in the fast-growing economy where businesses may compound at two to three times faster than those of Canada or the U.S. We hope you leave here today with a clear picture of our vision. Thank you very much.