Emerging Markets: 7 Powerful Reasons India Is the Essential Investment Opportunity for the Next Decade
Emerging markets represent one of the most consequential capital allocation decisions fund managers face today, and according to Kevin Carter, founder and CIO of EMQQ Global, India has now become the single most compelling opportunity within that universe.
Key Takeaways
- Understand why emerging markets, and India in particular, represent a structurally distinct capital allocation category that institutional fund managers are increasingly scrutinizing for portfolio diversification.
- Learn how the three megatrends shaping emerging markets, including smartphone adoption, internet access, and the rise of billions of new consumers, are converging most powerfully in India right now.
- Discover why India’s digital public infrastructure, known as the India Stack, has created a foundation for emerging markets growth that no other economy on the planet has replicated at scale.
- Consider how India’s demographic profile, with the world’s largest and youngest population and fastest-growing major economy, differentiates it from every other emerging markets destination for capital.
- Explore how the McKinsey CEO’s framing of an “India Century” aligns with the structural data points Kevin Carter identifies as the core thesis for long-term emerging markets capital positioning.
Why Emerging Markets Are Entering a New Phase and Why India Is at the Center
Emerging markets have historically been treated as a monolithic risk category by institutional allocators, but the structural divergence now unfolding within this universe demands a more granular framework. According to Kevin Carter, founder and CIO of EMQQ Global and a longtime collaborator with Princeton economist Dr. Burton Malkiel, the emerging markets story is no longer about a single country or a single trend. It is about understanding which economy within the emerging markets universe is best positioned to absorb and generate capital over the next two to three decades.
Carter defines emerging markets as a group of 46 countries characterized by GDP per capita generally below $25,000 and home to approximately 85% of the world’s population. Within emerging markets, the most important dynamic is not just economic growth but the maturation of a new consumer class, what Carter describes as 6.5 billion people who want more and better food, clothing, education, and access to digital services. This consumer awakening is the foundational thesis behind why emerging markets demand serious attention from professional allocators.
India has now emerged as the most structurally compelling story within the broader emerging markets category, and Carter’s analysis draws on over 14 months of deep research into the country’s digital, demographic, and economic trajectory. Understanding why India stands apart from every other emerging markets destination requires examining the specific structural pillars Carter identifies in this episode, which range from population dynamics to the country’s unique digital infrastructure. Fund managers evaluating emerging markets exposure should treat these pillars as an educational framework for building conviction, not as a formula for guaranteed returns.
The Three Megatrends Reshaping Emerging Markets Capital Flows
~7 million new smartphone users per month in India alone. Devices available new from as little as $12. First computer for billions of people.
Populations going from zero to full connectivity instantly. Simultaneous access to calculator, camera, encyclopedia, and payments — all in one device.
E-commerce, e-payments, and digital consumption surge once connected. India e-commerce penetration ~5% vs. China’s 25% — long runway ahead.
Framework: Kevin Carter, EMQQ Global
Emerging markets analysis, according to Carter, is most useful when organized around structural megatrends rather than short-term macroeconomic cycles. The first megatrend Carter identifies is the mass adoption of smartphones across emerging markets, where billions of people are receiving their first computer in the form of an affordable Android device. In India specifically, Carter notes that approximately 7 million people per month are getting their first smartphone, and that device can now be purchased brand new for as little as $12.
The second megatrend layered on top of smartphone adoption across emerging markets is the simultaneous arrival of internet access for populations that have never had it before. Carter describes this as a fundamentally different experience from anything developed markets have witnessed, noting that these consumers are going from zero to 100 in an instant. They are receiving their first calculator, their first camera, their first encyclopedia, and their first payment system simultaneously, all through a single affordable device, and this compressed adoption curve is unique to the emerging markets context.
The third megatrend Carter identifies within emerging markets is the explosion of e-commerce, e-payments, and the full spectrum of digital consumption that follows once populations are connected. He draws an explicit parallel to the United States, noting that in any historical period, the highest-returning segment of an economy undergoing digital transformation has been the internet sector. Carter applies this same logic to the emerging markets context, specifically India, where e-commerce penetration currently sits at approximately 5% of total retail compared to China’s 25%, suggesting a long runway ahead. For more context on how e-commerce penetration benchmarks are tracked globally, the Investopedia overview of e-commerce provides useful definitional grounding.
China vs. India: What the Emerging Markets Comparison Reveals for Fund Managers
| Metric | China | India |
|---|---|---|
| E-Commerce Penetration | ~25% of retail | ~5% of retail |
| Avg. Population Age | 30s | 20s |
| GDP Growth (Recent) | Slowing | ~6.5–7%+ |
| Digital Public Infrastructure | Not at equiv. stage | India Stack built |
| Geopolitical Risk | Elevated (US tensions) | Lower |
| Development Stage | Mature digital economy | Early-stage inflection |
Framework: Kevin Carter, EMQQ Global
Emerging markets analysis over the past two decades has been dominated by China, and Carter does not dismiss the significance of that story. He describes China as having built the world’s greatest infrastructure and becoming the manufacturing center of the planet, with GDP growth of approximately 400% over the last 15 years. China’s e-commerce market is, by Carter’s account, four times larger than all other emerging markets combined, and the country’s digital economy is among the most sophisticated on the planet.
However, Carter notes that China now carries a level of geopolitical controversy and headline risk that has made it a more complex allocation decision for institutional fund managers. He also points to a structural demographic shift, with China’s average population age now in the 30s and its demographic profile increasingly resembling that of a European economy. These factors, combined with ongoing U.S.-China technology tensions, have shifted the attention of many emerging markets allocators toward India as the next major capital destination.
India’s e-commerce penetration of approximately 5% compared to China’s 25% is the central comparative data point Carter uses to articulate the India emerging markets opportunity. He describes India today as looking a lot like China did 15 to 20 years ago, but with additional structural advantages including a younger population, a stronger technology talent base, and a digital public infrastructure that China did not have at the equivalent stage of its development. Fund managers studying this comparison in the context of emerging markets capital allocation should review the Bloomberg Emerging Markets hub for ongoing data on relative market development across the category.
India’s Demographic Edge Within the Emerging Markets Universe
Emerging markets investing, at its core, is a bet on people, and no country in the world offers a more compelling demographic profile than India at this moment in history. Carter notes that India surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation as of April of the year prior to this recording, and unlike China’s aging population, India’s demographic trajectory is still climbing. If you remove China from the emerging markets universe entirely, India alone accounts for more than half of the remaining emerging markets population.
India’s average population age is in the 20s, compared to China’s average in the 30s, and this age gap has compounding implications for workforce growth, consumption expansion, and digital adoption rates across the emerging markets spectrum. Carter also highlights that India has the fastest-growing major economy among all emerging markets, with an estimated growth rate of approximately 6.5% for the year in question, and that each of the two quarters prior to this recording had delivered growth exceeding 7%. These figures, presented as historical data points within the episode, are shared here for educational context only and do not constitute a forward-looking projection.
Carter’s view is that India’s middle class will surpass China’s in size within a decade, making the country the dominant consumer story within the emerging markets universe for the foreseeable future. This demographic momentum, combined with rising wages and disposable income, forms the foundation of a consumer-led emerging markets thesis that Carter has been refining over more than 20 years. The Wall Street Journal’s India coverage provides ongoing reporting on the economic and demographic trends Carter references in this episode.
India’s Technology Talent Pool and Its Role in the Emerging Markets Investment Thesis
Emerging markets are often evaluated through the lens of labor costs alone, but Carter argues that India’s technology talent base represents a qualitative advantage that goes well beyond wage arbitrage. India’s technology outsourcing sector is approximately 50 years old, with companies like Infosys and Tata Consultancy having served Fortune 500 and S&P 500 clients for three to four decades. This creates an established technology ecosystem within the emerging markets context that no other developing economy can match.
Carter cites several data points to illustrate the depth of India’s technology talent pipeline in the emerging markets context. He notes that 25 S&P 500 companies currently have Indian-born CEOs, including the leaders of Microsoft and Alphabet, both of whom originally entered the United States on temporary work visas. He also observes that approximately half of the deans at leading American universities are of Indian descent, and that Indian Americans earn approximately three times the national average income, the highest of any diaspora group tracked in the data he references.
The Indian Institutes of Technology, modeled after MIT, represent a world-class educational infrastructure that continuously feeds high-skill talent into both domestic and global technology markets. Carter argues that as global supply chains shift and companies seek alternatives to China-based manufacturing and technology development, India’s skilled labor base positions it as the natural emerging markets beneficiary of that structural realignment. For additional context on how institutional investors evaluate talent ecosystems within emerging markets, Harvard Business Review’s emerging markets research offers a useful academic perspective.
The India Stack: The Digital Infrastructure Redefining Emerging Markets Investment
Biometric digital identity program. 12-digit unique ID tied to fingerprint and iris scans. Over 1.3 billion enrolled voluntarily. Foundation for all layers above.
Know Your Customer capability built on Aadhaar. Bank account opened instantly via biometric scan — no paperwork. Result: 800 million new digital bank accounts created.
QR-code-based, zero-cost, real-time mobile payments. Now ~50% of global real-time mobile payments volume. India went from 95% cash to digital payments leader in ~7 years.
Framework: Kevin Carter, EMQQ Global
Emerging markets have historically been constrained by infrastructure deficits, but India has built a digital public infrastructure layer that Carter describes as unique on the planet. The India Stack, as it is commonly referred to, is a layered series of government-initiated digital programs that together have created a seamless, biometric-based digital economy. Understanding the India Stack is, according to Carter, essential for any emerging markets investor seeking to build a credible thesis on India’s long-term trajectory.
The first layer of the India Stack was launched in 2009 and formalized in 2010 under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys. Called Aadhaar, which translates to foundation, this program assigned every Indian citizen a unique 12-digit identification number tied to biometric data including fingerprint and iris scans. The program was entirely voluntary, and by the time of this episode’s recording, over 1.3 billion people had enrolled, effectively giving the entire emerging markets population of India a verifiable digital identity for the first time.
The second layer added a Know Your Customer capability on top of the Aadhaar foundation, allowing any enrolled citizen to open a bank account instantly by walking into a branch and providing a biometric scan with no paperwork required. Carter notes that this single intervention resulted in the creation of 800 million new digital bank accounts, bringing a previously unbanked population into the formal financial system at a scale that no other emerging markets economy has achieved.
The third layer, the Unified Payments Interface launched in 2016, created a QR-code-based, zero-cost, instantaneous payments network that now accounts for approximately half of the entire world’s real-time mobile payments volume, a remarkable achievement for an economy that was 95% cash-based just seven years prior. The SEC‘s EDGAR database can be used to research filings from Indian companies seeking U.S. market listings as this emerging markets story develops.
Why the Internet Sector Is the Core of the Emerging Markets India Thesis
Emerging markets internet companies represent, in Carter’s framework, the most concentrated expression of the structural forces reshaping India’s economy. He draws a direct historical analogy to the United States, noting that over any 20-year period in developed markets, the internet sector has consistently outperformed the broad index on a returns basis. He applies the same analytical framework to China and then to India, arguing that the internet and digital consumption companies are the natural emerging markets beneficiaries of the demographic, digital, and infrastructure trends he has outlined throughout this episode.
Carter founded EMQQ Global specifically to capture the emerging markets internet and e-commerce sector, and more recently launched INQQ, an India-specific ETF designed to provide exposure to the Indian internet economy. He notes that only two publicly traded Indian internet companies existed three years prior to this recording, compared to approximately 25 at the time of the episode, a rapid expansion that has created a more investable universe for fund managers seeking emerging markets exposure specifically to India’s digital economy. These observations are shared as educational context and do not constitute a recommendation to invest in any specific security or fund.
Carter also addresses valuation within the emerging markets India context, noting that while the broad Indian equity market is not cheaply valued relative to global peers, the internet and digital sector within India is, in his assessment, reasonably priced relative to its growth trajectory. This valuation nuance is an important consideration for fund managers building emerging markets allocation frameworks, as entry point discipline is always a relevant variable in any institutional investment process. For educational reading on how institutional investors approach emerging markets valuation, Forbes’ emerging markets commentary provides accessible coverage of the ongoing debate.
Geopolitical Context and the Emerging Markets Capital Rotation Thesis
Emerging markets capital flows do not occur in a geopolitical vacuum, and Carter addresses the broader macro context that is accelerating institutional attention toward India. He describes the U.S.-China technology tensions as having caused a meaningful retreat in cross-border technology investment flows, with both sides increasingly at odds over technological development priorities. This dynamic has created a structural opening for India within the emerging markets universe, as capital that might previously have flowed to China seeks alternative destinations with comparable scale and growth potential.
Carter also touches on the historical context of India’s development trajectory, noting that the country has been independent for 75 years and is, in his view, only now beginning to shed its early socialist policy orientation in favor of a more market-driven growth model. He describes this as a country hitting full stride after decades of underperformance relative to its potential, a framing that aligns with the McKinsey CEO’s widely cited characterization of the current period as the India century. These are perspectives shared for educational and informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as investment guidance.
The combination of geopolitical repositioning within the emerging markets universe, India’s structural economic advantages, and the maturation of its digital infrastructure creates a confluence of factors that Carter believes distinguishes India from every other emerging markets opportunity available to institutional allocators today. He is careful throughout the episode to note that emerging markets always carry volatility, and that this is the nature of investing in any developing economy. Fund managers should conduct their own due diligence and consult appropriate advisors before making any capital allocation decisions related to the emerging markets themes discussed in this episode. The SEC’s guidance on emerging markets investing risks is a valuable educational resource for any allocator evaluating this category.
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About the Guest
Kevin Carter is the founder and chief investment officer of EMQQ Global, an emerging markets-focused ETF company that tracks the emerging markets internet and e-commerce sector on the New York Stock Exchange. He has collaborated extensively with Dr. Burton Malkiel, the Princeton economist and author of the bestselling book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and has spent over 20 years building investment frameworks focused on the emerging markets consumer opportunity.
Carter previously founded a company that he sold to E-Trade and has spoken widely on the emerging markets thesis, with particular focus on China and India’s digital economies. His most recent work has centered on the India-specific investment universe through the INQQ ETF, designed to capture the digital growth of the Indian economy within the broader emerging markets context. Listeners can learn more about EMQQ Global and its funds through the company’s publicly available materials.
Questions Answered in This Article
Why are ultra-wealthy investors relocating capital to emerging market countries now?
Emerging market economies are growing approximately twice as fast as the United States and other developed markets, creating conditions that attract institutional capital seeking superior growth. The 6.5 billion consumers in these 46 countries are rapidly building middle classes and increasing disposable income, driving demand across digital commerce, payments, and consumer goods. Investors who tracked China’s trajectory 15 to 20 years ago are now applying that same framework to markets like India, which mirrors China’s early-stage digital adoption curve.
Which countries are attracting the most institutional capital inflows in 2025?
India stands out as the primary destination drawing institutional attention, driven by its status as the world’s most populous nation, a GDP growth rate estimated at 6.5% with recent quarters exceeding 7%, and an e-commerce penetration rate of only 5% compared to China’s 25%. EMQQ Global’s Kevin Carter identifies India as occupying the same inflection point China held 15 to 20 years ago, when foundational consumer and digital growth compounded rapidly. The country’s combination of demographic strength, technological talent, and expanding digital infrastructure makes it the most cited destination for allocators tracking emerging market internet consumption.
How are global wealth migration trends impacting emerging market investment opportunities?
As capital and talent concentrate in high-growth regions, the consumer base in emerging markets expands, reinforcing the investment thesis for digital commerce and payments platforms serving those populations. India’s growing middle class is projected to surpass China’s in size within a decade, representing a structural shift in where global consumption growth originates. This redistribution of economic activity creates durable opportunities for investors positioned in the companies serving these new consumers through smartphone-based platforms.
What drives billionaires and fund managers to move assets abroad?
Fund managers and institutional allocators are drawn to markets where GDP growth, demographic trends, and digital adoption curves align to produce faster earnings growth than mature developed economies can offer. Kevin Carter notes that emerging market economies growing at twice the U.S. rate translate directly into faster wage growth and expanding disposable income among new consumer classes. The combination of large, young populations and first-generation internet access creates conditions that have historically generated significant equity returns in comparable markets.
Why is so much private wealth flowing into UAE Singapore and similar markets?
The episode focuses primarily on India as the destination attracting capital flows due to its structural economic advantages rather than on UAE or Singapore specifically. Kevin Carter’s framework emphasizes that capital follows young demographics, fast GDP growth, and expanding digital consumer bases, conditions that define the current investment case for India and other high-growth emerging markets. Markets that combine a large talent pool, improving digital infrastructure, and rising consumer spending tend to concentrate both human and financial capital over time.
How should family offices position portfolios around global wealth migration shifts?
Kevin Carter recommends gaining exposure to the emerging market internet and e-commerce sector, which captures the consumer spending of billions of people obtaining smartphones and internet access for the first time. Rather than broad emerging market exposure through traditional indices, Carter’s approach focuses on the companies functioning as the Amazon, Uber, and PayPal equivalents within high-growth markets like India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Family offices willing to accept the volatility inherent in emerging markets stand to benefit from the secular growth of digital consumption across a population representing 85% of the world’s people.
Which emerging markets offer the best risk-adjusted returns for institutional allocators?
India presents the most compelling case among emerging markets based on the convergence of population size, demographic youth, GDP growth velocity, and early-stage digital adoption, according to Carter. With e-commerce penetration at just 5% of total retail and approximately 7 million new smartphone users entering the market each month, the runway for compounding growth remains long. India’s 50-year-old technology services sector, world-class engineering talent, and advanced digital public infrastructure reduce some of the execution risk typically associated with frontier market investing.
What is EMQQ Global’s thesis on the next decade’s hottest emerging market?
EMQQ Global’s thesis centers on India as the defining emerging market opportunity of the next decade, citing its position as the world’s largest and youngest major population, its fastest-growing major economy, and its digital infrastructure known as the India Stack. Carter draws a direct parallel to China’s trajectory from 15 to 20 years ago, when low e-commerce penetration and rapid smartphone adoption preceded an extended period of outsized consumer and equity market growth. The firm believes India’s combination of unmatched technology talent, expanding digital payments infrastructure, and a consumer class approaching the scale of China’s makes it the most important single-country opportunity in emerging markets investing today.
Topics Covered in This Article
- Emerging markets defined: the 46-country universe and its structural characteristics
- The three megatrends reshaping emerging markets capital allocation
- Emerging markets comparison: China vs. India and what it means for fund managers
- India’s demographic profile and why it leads the emerging markets universe
- The India Stack and its role in accelerating emerging markets digital adoption
- Emerging markets technology talent: India’s unmatched skill base
- The UPI payments system and India’s real-time mobile payments leadership
- Emerging markets internet sector: why digital companies represent the core thesis
- Geopolitical context and the emerging markets capital rotation from China to India
- Educational frameworks for evaluating emerging markets within institutional portfolios
How the India Stack Layers Create an Emerging Markets Advantage No Other Economy Has Built
Emerging markets have long struggled with the foundational challenge of financial inclusion, and the India Stack represents the most ambitious and successful attempt to solve that problem at population scale. Carter explains that the first layer, Aadhaar, was conceived under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani, one of the co-founders of Infosys, and launched formally in 2010 as a voluntary biometric identification program that ultimately enrolled over 1.3 billion people. The program gave every enrolled Indian citizen a verifiable 12-digit digital identity tied to fingerprint and iris biometrics, a precondition for every financial and digital service layer that followed.
The second layer of the India Stack, built on top of Aadhaar within the emerging markets digital infrastructure, introduced a Know Your Customer capability that allowed any enrolled citizen to open a bank account in minutes using only a biometric scan. Carter notes that this single intervention produced 800 million new digital bank accounts, bringing a previously unbanked population into the formal financial system faster than any comparable program in the history of emerging markets development. The scale of that financial inclusion achievement is, in his assessment, unprecedented among emerging markets economies and creates a durable foundation for digital commerce growth.
The third and most visible layer of the India Stack is the Unified Payments Interface, launched in 2016, which Carter describes as a QR-code-based, zero-cost, real-time mobile payments network that now accounts for approximately half of the world’s total real-time mobile payments volume. This is a remarkable data point for any emerging markets analyst to absorb, given that India was a 95% cash economy just seven years before this episode was recorded. For institutional fund managers seeking to understand the payments infrastructure dimension of the emerging markets India thesis, the Bank for International Settlements coverage of fast payment systems provides authoritative comparative data on real-time payments adoption across both developed and emerging markets economies.
The Emerging Markets Internet Sector as the Core Expression of India’s Structural Thesis
Emerging markets internet companies represent, according to Carter in this episode, the most concentrated and accessible expression of the structural forces reshaping India’s economy for institutional allocators. He draws a direct historical analogy to the United States, noting that over any meaningful multi-decade period in developed markets, the internet and digital consumption sector has consistently been the highest-returning segment of the broader economy. Carter applies this same analytical lens first to China and then to India, arguing that the emerging markets internet sector is the natural beneficiary of the demographic, digital infrastructure, and consumer adoption trends he has outlined throughout the episode.
Carter founded EMQQ Global specifically to capture the emerging markets internet and e-commerce sector, and more recently launched INQQ, an India-specific ETF designed to provide exposure to the Indian internet economy within the broader emerging markets context. He notes that only two publicly traded Indian internet companies existed approximately three years before this episode’s recording, compared to roughly 25 at the time of the conversation, a rapid expansion that has created a more investable universe for fund managers seeking emerging markets exposure specifically to India’s digital sector. These observations are shared as educational and informational context only and do not constitute a recommendation to invest in any specific security, ETF, or fund product.
Carter also addresses valuation within the emerging markets India internet context, noting that while the broad Indian equity market carries a premium relative to many global peers, the internet and digital sector within India is, in his assessment, reasonably priced relative to its growth trajectory and the structural tailwinds supporting it. This valuation nuance is a meaningful consideration for fund managers building emerging markets allocation frameworks, as entry point discipline is a relevant variable in any institutional capital allocation process. For educational reading on how institutional investors approach emerging markets sector valuation, Investopedia’s overview of emerging market economies provides useful definitional and analytical grounding for allocators approaching this category for the first time.
Geopolitical Realignment and the Emerging Markets Capital Rotation Toward India
Emerging markets capital flows do not occur in a geopolitical vacuum, and Carter addresses the broader macro context that is accelerating institutional attention toward India as a capital destination. He describes the escalating U.S.-China technology tensions as having caused a meaningful contraction in cross-border technology investment flows, with both sides increasingly at odds over technological development priorities and supply chain dependencies. This dynamic has created a structural opening for India within the emerging markets universe, as capital that might previously have been directed toward China-based digital assets seeks alternative destinations with comparable population scale and growth potential.
Carter also places India’s current development moment in historical context, noting that the country has been independent for 75 years and is, in his view, only now beginning to shed the policy orientation of its earlier socialist era in favor of a more market-driven growth model. He describes this as a country finally hitting full stride after decades of underperformance relative to its structural potential, a framing that aligns with the McKinsey CEO’s widely cited characterization of the current period as the India century within the broader emerging markets narrative. These perspectives are shared for educational and informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as forward-looking projections or investment guidance of any kind.
The combination of geopolitical repositioning within the emerging markets universe, India’s structural economic and demographic advantages, and the maturation of its India Stack digital infrastructure creates a confluence of factors that Carter believes distinguishes India from any other emerging markets opportunity available to institutional allocators today. He is careful throughout the episode to note that emerging markets always carry meaningful volatility, and that this volatility is the nature of investing in any developing economy regardless of its structural merits. Fund managers evaluating the emerging markets themes discussed in this episode should conduct independent due diligence and consult appropriate advisors, and can reference the SEC’s investor guidance on emerging markets risks as an authoritative educational starting point.
An Educational Framework for Institutional Allocators Evaluating Emerging Markets Exposure
Emerging markets analysis, as Carter presents it throughout this episode, is most useful when organized around a structured set of evaluative criteria rather than headline macroeconomic data alone. The framework he has developed over more than 20 years of research centers on five core questions: How large is the population? How young is the demographic profile? How fast is the economy growing? How deep is the technology talent base? And how developed is the digital infrastructure supporting consumer adoption? India, in Carter’s assessment, answers each of these questions more compellingly than any other emerging markets economy available to institutional allocators at this moment in history.
Carter’s collaboration with Dr. Burton Malkiel, the Princeton economist and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, has reinforced his conviction that systematic, index-based approaches to capturing the emerging markets internet sector are more durable than concentrated individual security selection in this category. The EMQQ and INQQ products he has built reflect that philosophy, providing exposure to the emerging markets digital consumer thesis through a rules-based methodology designed to track the sector’s evolution over time. These structural design choices are presented here as educational observations about how one institutional practitioner has approached the emerging markets category, and do not constitute an endorsement of any specific product or investment strategy.
Fund managers and institutional allocators who want to build a rigorous understanding of the emerging markets India thesis should treat Carter’s framework as a starting point for deeper independent research rather than a conclusive analytical system. The Harvard Business Review’s library of emerging markets research offers a robust collection of academic and practitioner perspectives that can complement the practical frameworks Carter shares in this episode of Making Billions Podcast. All content in this article is educational and informational only, and no portion of this discussion should be interpreted as investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation related to any specific emerging markets security, fund, or strategy.
About the Guest
Kevin Carter is the founder and chief investment officer of EMQQ Global, an emerging markets-focused ETF company whose flagship fund tracks the emerging markets internet and e-commerce sector on the New York Stock Exchange. He has collaborated extensively with Dr. Burton Malkiel, the Princeton economist and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and has spent over 20 years developing investment frameworks centered on the emerging markets consumer and digital opportunity.
Carter previously founded a company that he sold to E-Trade and has since focused his work on the emerging markets internet sector through EMQQ and the India-specific INQQ ETF, designed to capture the digital growth of the Indian economy within the broader emerging markets universe. Listeners can explore his publicly available research and fund materials through EMQQ Global’s official channels to learn more about the emerging markets frameworks he discusses in this episode.
Topics Covered in This Article
- Emerging markets defined: the 46-country universe, GDP per capita thresholds, and population dynamics
- The three megatrends reshaping emerging markets capital flows: smartphones, internet access, and the new consumer class
- Emerging markets comparison: China vs. India and what the e-commerce penetration gap signals for allocators
- India’s demographic profile and why it leads the emerging markets universe in population size and youth
- The India Stack: Aadhaar, Know Your Customer infrastructure, and the Unified Payments Interface
- Emerging markets technology talent: India’s 50-year outsourcing ecosystem and its world-class engineering institutions
- The emerging markets internet sector as the core expression of India’s structural investment thesis
- Geopolitical context and the emerging markets capital rotation from China toward India
- How Dr. Burton Malkiel’s indexing philosophy shaped Carter’s approach to emerging markets ETF construction
- An educational framework for institutional allocators evaluating emerging markets exposure in alternative portfolios
