MUMBAI: Ajay Piramal is sitting on a mountain of cash. Yet the billionaire Indian tycoon, working in one of the world's fastest growing economies, is struggling to figure out what to do with the money.
The problem isn't opportunity, he says. It's India.
''Every large investment, there was no transparency,'' he said.
His dilemma is a worrying sign for India. With the country mired in corruption, bureaucratic red tape and unclear and changing government policies, many of the men who made their billions here are saying maybe it's time to quit India. It's got to be easier to do business elsewhere.
In May last year, Piramal's healthcare business sold its generic drug operations to US pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories for $3.8 billion. Piramal, a tall big man in a country that still measures prosperity by girth, was eager to set that cash pile to work. He wanted to expand one of his chemical plants, but was told it would take five years.
''The same plant could be set up in China in two years,'' he said. ''I love India, but my customer is not going to wait.''
India, still a beacon of relatively fast growth despite a troubled world economy, should be a magnet for capital. Instead, since the beginning of 2010, the amount that Indians have invested in businesses overseas has exceeded the amount foreigners are investing in India, according to central bank figures.
In part this reflects the confidence and aptitude of India's maturing companies and the current malaise in the global economy and financial markets. But it also reflects deep problems at home. India's big corporations may be cash rich but the failure to invest that money domestically is bad news for a developing country that needs capital to build the roads, power plants and food warehouses that could help lift hundreds of millions out of dire poverty.
The frustration of India's business elite with corruption, political paralysis, log-jammed approvals, regulatory flip-flops, lack of access to natural resources and land acquisition battles _ to pick a few of the top complaints _ has reached a pitch perhaps not heard since India began liberalizing its economy in the early 1990s.
''If you are an honest businessman in India, it's very difficult to start up anything,'' said Jamshyd Godrej, chairman of manufacturing giant Godrej & Boyce. ''Companies are going to operate where they see the best opportunities and efficiency for their capital.''
Increasingly, that's outside India.
In 2008, foreigners poured roughly twice as much direct investment into India _ $33 billion _ as Indians plowed into businesses overseas. By 2010, that had reversed: Indians invested $40 billion abroad _ twice as much as foreigners invested in India _ a trend that's continued this year.
There is another, unspoken element to all the complaints. To the extent that business in India ran on corruption, some of the old, dirty ways of doing things are being disrupted, freezing India's already glacial bureaucracy, business leaders say.
Scandals in the staging of the Commonwealth Games, the pilfering of homes meant for war widows and the irregular auction of cellphone spectrum that cost the country billions has sent parliamentarians and even a Cabinet minister to prison.
With Indians tiring of the incessant graft, tens of thousands of middle-class protesters poured into the streets and pushed an anti-corruption bill onto the floor of Parliament.
Steelmakers can't get enough iron ore because a massive mining scandal in the southern state of Karnataka prompted a court to order the closure of illicit mines that account for a fifth of iron ore production in the country.
The bureaucrats _ even the honest ones _ are reportedly so scared of being punished they are refusing to make the decisions needed to make the country run.
Piramal is not unpatriotic. Each room in his executive suite is named after an Indian epic hero: Arjuna, the most pure; Dhananjay, acquirer and master of wealth. There's a quote from the Upanishads scriptures on the wall.
His office sits in a one million square foot office park in Mumbai his family built. The buildings around him _ white with blue glass that flashes back the unforgiving sun _ bear his own name in large black letters: Piramal Towers.
Piramal had the will and the means to build power plants and roads.
Instead, his Piramal Group's largest investment to date has been in one of the office park's tenants: the Indian subsidiary of the British telecom giant Vodafone PLC.
Last September, when he got the first payout, of $2.2 billion, from Abbott, the phone started ringing.
''Because people knew we had money, we had so many people approaching us for projects in the infrastructure sector,'' he said.
''These people had no experience and no knowledge and no track record of having built a business in any area. And yet they were coming to us saying we have licenses and approvals. That just didn't sound right or smell right.'' He added.
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