India should leverage its strengths in the services sector as it has the potential to attract $3 trillion foreign investment in ten years' time, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said in New Delhi on Friday.

He said this was much greater than what China attracted as foreign direct investment in the last ten years.

Ambani said it was necessary to realise this potential and move away from an FDI-oriented approach to capital inflows, as India had moved away from the IMF-oriented approach.

"India has the opportunity to hasten economic development on the strength of services. Our people power is enormous. An entire industry based on professional resources and back-office operations has blossomed in India. We are also shifting gear to high-end services in areas such as market research, financial analysis, engineering design, digital media and contract research. India has the wherewithal to ride these opportunities," Ambani said at the India Today Conclave.

He pointed out that the services sector would not only generate employment, but it also had the scope to generate financial resources on a large scale, commensurate with India's development, especially given the country's skill-sets in the sector.

"To do this, we have to make a paradigm shift -- from providing support services to directly serving global consumer needs," he added.

Ambani said his foresight was based on a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation. He said ten million people working 2000 hours at $15 per hour would generate $300 billion a year, adding that over a ten-year period this would translate into a capital inflow of $3 trillion.

He said much of the growth in the future would be driven by India's growing numbers of people below 25, and this was also evident from the fact that the country was witnessing for the first time an election being fought over the issue of development.

Talking about the recent cases of interference by the government in the matters of the Indian Institutes of Management, Ambani said, "It is critical to maintain the autonomy of educational institutes. But, on the other hand, there is also a need to build capacities so that more people get opportunities in higher education."

He pointed to the fact that financiers were providing enough financial support for students getting into premier institutes. So, even the poorer students could get access to these institutes.

"The market should be allowed to pay for the higher education. I do not think there is any difference between a student who gets 98 per cent and the one who gets 94 per cent. But due to paucity of seats, only the former gets the benefits of a premier institute," the chairman of the largest Indian company said.