Prudential Plc is eyeing bigger investments in India. "The world is changing its views on India now. We have been seeing growth opportunities for quite sometime. India and China will become bigger than many of the G-6 economies," said Jonathan Bloomer, chief executive, Prudential.

Bloomer was in Mumbai over the weekend -- his first visit as Prudential chief -- to celebrate the company's five year association with ICICI Bank.

"We will invest more in India over time. Some will happen as our business ventures here grow and need more capital. In addition, we will invest more in the market place," Bloomer said.

Prudential is currently overweight on India even as its weightage in the Morgan Stanley Capital International Index stands at a little over 3 per cent against other South-east Asian countries whose weightages are as high as 15 per cent.

Bloomer, however, is confident that India's position in the world ranking will change over the long term. "This is a market for us to invest in," he added. Prudential has been a serious investor in Asia for the past nine years. Since then, the contribution from the region has grown from 5 per cent to 40 per cent of Prudential's global investment kitty.

"India's share is not very big. But it is growing. The scale of Indian economy is increasing. There will be explosion in savings. Naturally, this is a market for us," Bloomer said.

Prudential has two joint ventures in the country with ICICI Bank -- the asset management company (Prudential ICICI AMC) where it has 55 per cent stake; and the life insurance venture (ICICI Prudential Life) where its stake is capped at 26 per cent in keeping with the regulations. In addition, it recently set up Prudential Process Management Services India, where it has 100 per cent stake.

If regulations permit, Prudential is willing to raise its stake in the insurance venture but there is no plan to recast the capital structure of the AMC. The focus at the moment is on Prudential Process Management Services India.

"This is not a call centre. It will handle accounting processes, product designing etc and emerge as an offshore centre," Bloomer said. This essentially means it will much more than a mere outsourcing centre for the United Kingdom operations.