A number of the Tata Group’s top executives have said that you can’t understand their Group until you have visited  Jamshedpur. I confess at first I had little idea where the place was, but after a warm invitation from  Messrs  Muthuraman and Nerurkar, Vice Chairman  and Managing Director respectively of Tata Steel, I  soon found out much more. 

The city -  with a population of around 1 million or more it is that -  is some 250 kilometres north of Kolkata. The short flight quickly reveals that it is in a rural area, surrounded just before you arrive by some gentle hills and, at least in April, dried up river beds. Then the enormity of what Tata has developed hits you, with the first sight of a vast steelworks, and almost as big a motor plant.

The concept for the city, founded over 100 years ago, was the dream of Tata’s revered founder, Jamsetji Tata, and its location was chosen because of access to major deposits of iron ore. After discussions in the UK and US he proposed a new steel town for India and Tata, and writing to his son, set out his plan:
 
“Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, be sure there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens, reserve large areas for football, hockey and parks,” he wrote.

Sadly Jamsetji didn’t live to see his vision become a reality, but his son Dorab could not have followed the precepts more carefully, and if either could see their city today they would be proud that their successors have kept, despite huge expansion , to their initial  aims. In an astonishing pace of development the steel plant can now produce over 10 Mt. of crude steel a year, compared to 6Mt  just  five years ago.  As some of the senior executives noted wryly the new operations at Jamshedpur contrast sharply with the difficult conditions for the steel industry in Europe where, Port Talbot apart, expansion is not on the agenda.

The wide streets and parks of the founder’s dream have remained, and Jamshedpur is often listed as one of the most liveable cities in India. Before work, parks and sports facilities are full of cricket, soccer and others sports enthusiasts, and the city boasts a superb stadium. While I was visiting it was hosting the national archery championship, a sport that Tata Steel sponsors in India. There is also a very appropriate link to a British city, Sheffield, with the Tata Steel Soccer Academy welcoming teachers from Sheffield United for the forty lucky young players who are sponsored by the Group for two years to live, study and play soccer before many of them turn professional.

Inevitably, in a city of a million, there are occasional problems, and the pressures on youth to perform has led to some suicides. Tata have also looked carefully at their provision of services for the city, and concluded that these should be outsourced rather than run by the Group,  so an independent company has now taken responsibility for municipal facilities. Despite numerous debates the City remains one of the few which has no elected Municipal Council. Tata Steel retains close links to, and support for, a range of tribal and other minority groups in and around the city.

For the vast majority of people living in Jamshedpur – including the many who have chosen to retire there – it is city which offers one of the best conceivable environments to live and work. There are doubtless comparisons with US cities where a single corporation dominates an urban community, and  the closest British example I could think of was Bournville in the West Midlands, where chocolate manufacturer Cadbury’s provided a rich variety of facilities, hospitals  and housing – just as Tata does – to all its employees.  There isn’t a major corporation dominating  Welwyn Garden City’s inhabitants, but it isn’t too far-fetched either to compare living standards in that planned community  to Jamshedpur – with one huge difference: the inhabitants of Jamshedpur are producing daily steel  and commercial vehicles in two of the largest plants across India.

Jamsetji Tata would be proud of what his successors and their employees have managed to create and maintain. Little wonder all the inhabitants of the city turn out in their thousands every year to mark Founder’s Day. He was, as India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said, “one of the big founders of modern India”.

The Prime Minister’s visit to India in February set a number of firsts: the first by a British PM to Mumbai for 20 years, the first by a PM to Amritsar, and the first to India (or anywhere) to be joined by over 120 businesspeople.
The size of the business group set us in Mumbai a huge range of challenges, and opportunities. The challenges were apparent from the moment the delegation arrived in their Virgin charter, with the task of getting such a large group (in some cases of some very senior executives) on to a bus! Someone remarked that some of the CEO’s probably hadn’t used a coach for years, but somehow we managed to get the entire group to the nearby Hindustan Unilever Building on time, and with no missing persons, together with the Prime Minister and 12 Ministers and parliamentarians.

During the course of the day in Mumbai the logistics became even more complex, with the business delegation scattering across the city, with some talking about Mumbai’s infrastructure to the Chief Minister, others visiting one of the Godrej Group’s impressive engineering facilities, and others again visiting the Health Minister or a local college. Somehow they all managed to converge on time on  south  Mumbai in the evening to attend a reception given by one of the most senior visiting CEO’s , Bob Dudley of BP, together with Mukesh Ambani, chair of Reliance Industries.

That  occasion marked what was the single largest investment by any company in India, with BP announcing a further $3 -5bn in its joint venture to develop oil and gas fields off the East coast of India in the so-called K basin. This brings BP’s total investments into India to over $13bn, and has been by some way the most exciting and significant business development between our two countries since David Cameron visited India in 2010. Other big investments pursued during the PM’s visit included Diageo’s acquisition of parts of United Breweries spirits business, which will give the UK drinks giant a big heft in India, and BAe Systems continued work in the defence and aerospace sectors.

But of course not all the delegation represented Britain’s household names, and I’ll pick out just two companies to give a flavour of the range and size of businesses we supported in Mumbai.  Privately owned OCS does not yet have the familiar ring of BP or Diageo’s Gordon’s  Gin, but its range of cleaning,  catering and security services touches millions of office and retail workers in the UK. I met the group’s CEO, Chris Cracknell, three years ago in Mumbai, when he was considering whether India was a market he should aim to develop. His enquiries have been answered in spades here, and his chairman was with the PM’s delegation to quietly note that the Group has now passed the 15,000 mark with its number of employees in India: some jump in three years!

Another, much smaller company I met,  also three years ago,  has manoeuvred its business so successfully here that its founder and md, Nigel Lang, was also invited to join the  PM’s delegation.  Flitabout’s Indian subsidiary Cutting Edge is offering a range of promotional support, especially in hair dressing salons, for a range of products, and the company has achieved a presence in over 2500 hairdressers serving India’s burgeoning middle class throughout the country – another great example of how perseverance here can bring real rewards.

A much smaller, but significant, group in the PM’s delegation were the senior representatives of some of India’s major investors in the UK, including Infosys, Polaris Technologies, and TCS. Between them these three groups account  for major  IT and BPO activities employing thousands across the UK. Their UK or Indian-based  heads were invited to join a discussion with the Prime Minister and the cream of India’s businesspeople about the attractions of the UK for a base for Indian investment in Europe – we currently account for some 70 per cent of it.

TCS, one of the Tata Group’s star performers recently, also used the occasion of the Prime Minister’s visit to announce its support for a number of scholarships, the “Chevening TCS Scholarships”,  for Indians  to study cyber security technology, law and policy at a UK institute. This is another example of TCS’s close and growing links to Britain.

From gas fields  off the coast of India to hair gels, office cleaning products and BPO services  the PM’s delegation could hardly have covered a wider group of UK business interests while they were in Mumbai. As Sashi Mukundan, Head of country for BP India remarked as the delegation left India :  “the Prime Minister’s visit offered a unique opportunity for our Group, and its CEO Bob Dudley, to underline our long term commitment to India – and to be alongside an extraordinarily diverse range of other UK-based companies, from multi-nationals to SMEs. I’m delighted   we were able to use the visit, and our support with our partner Reliance Industries of the Egyptian Mummy exhibit with the British Museum, to help highlight our presence in India.”

Visits by the Prime Minister don’t come round too often to most FCO Posts, unless you happen to be in Brussels or Washington. Although I have met some “ex-PMs” in recent postings in Manila and Sydney, it’s more years than I care to remember when I was last involved in a visit by a current Prime Minister.

David Cameron speaking at the business event in Mumbai

So the visit to Mumbai – and that too before Delhi – of David Cameron was a rare treat, and honour,  for our office. It was the first visit by a British Prime Minister to Mumbai in 20 years, after John Major. It was made the more exciting, and  challenging, by the gradual realisation that the accompanying business, academic, ministerial and parliamentary delegation was growing to well over 120 strong – the largest ever accompanying business mission with a Prime Minister overseas.

After some weeks of careful preparation we thought we had planned  for every eventuality, until I got a call from the office around 0530 on the morning of the visit to say that the charter flight was running nearly an hour early! Later, the head of BP India – whose  global CEO  was on the flight with the PM – told me of his shock when he spotted from his balcony the distinctive Virgin plane on its final descent!

Our first stop was at the HQ of Hindustan Unilever.  Thanks to some fast footwork by the Unilever team they were somehow ready for our arrival. Unilever must have one of the most impressive new offices in Mumbai, with a huge covered “Street” between two buildings, and it was during a meeting there in December with their impressive CEO, Nitin Paranjpe,  and the High Commissioner James Bevan, that we dreamt up the idea of a visit by the PM.

He met over 300 of their employees, who weren’t shy in putting a range of questions from sustainability to his favourite Unilever product ( a question he ducked!) and education opportunities in the UK. They were left in no doubt of the PM’s commitment to seeing more well qualified students coming to the UK, and securing  graduate jobs.

From Unilever the delegation were given an extraordinary journey into South  Mumbai and their hotel with police lining the 20 km  route, in an exercise I heard subsequently was personally supervised by the Traffic Police Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar from his control room. A journey which usually takes well over an hour was completed in less than half the time, to the astonishment of the four Ministers I was travelling with by coach behind the Prime Minister.

David Cameron at the Unilever headquarters in Mumbai

An hour later the Prime Minister spoke to a 300 strong-business meeting, underlining in a way which recurred throughout his visit in public and private meetings  both his commitment to boost trade between our two countries and the openness of the UK to Indian investment.

Ratan Tata, the undisputed doyen of Indian business over the last 25 years, described how his conglomerate had benefited from its major investment with Jaguar LandRover, and found a great deal of support from the current British Government.

While the Prime Minister continued with private meetings with the heads some of Indian largest companies, and found the time to lay a wreath at the memorial to the police killed in the Mumbai  siege and meet the Chief Minister of Maharasthra, the business delegation spread out over Mumbai for a series of meetings and visits on a sectoral basis.

An infrastructure group, for example, which included the CEOs or chairmen of some of the UK’s largest companies,  like Balfour Beatty, Mott MacDonald and Arup, called on the Chief Minister,  another group on the Health Minister, and a third were given a walk through Mumbai’s newest mall to experience affluent India with  the head of the Biyani Group’s home products business Mark Ladham.

Prime Minister David Cameron with Chief Minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj Chavan

The infrastructure group heard from the Chief Minister about his plans for some major new transport links across Mumbai, and Transport for London initialled an MOU to co-operate on some of the developments.

Greg Barker, the Minister for Business Engagement with India, discussed UK plans to work with the Central and State governments on a new Bangalore Mumbai Economic Corridor, which Indian Ministers subsequently said  at a conference was an idea whose time had come.

The six business groups eventually gathered back in South Mumbai and went with the Prime Minister to an event which marked two other aspects of Indian – British co-operation. BP and Reliance Industries announced during the PM’s visits plans for a further $5bn of investment on top of the $7bn already committed by BP for an upstream and downstream joint venture – the largest single overseas investment ever in India.

The two companies had also sponsored a very different event, with an exhibition of Egyptian mummies from the British Museum at Mumbai’s counterpart museum. In its delightful grounds, rarely open to the public in the evening, the Prime Minister, BP CEO Bob Dudley and Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani  described how the jv and the Museums’ cooperation were yet  further examples of the ways in which UK-Indian relations were getting broader, stronger and deeper.

The evening’s reception marked the end of the Prime Minister’s and his delegation’s whirlwind day of activity spread across  Mumbai, beginning at the ultra modern Unilever building and finishing at the 1920’s designed museum, symbolising graphically the transformation in relations between our two countries.

The following morning the business delegation were off promptly  at 6am, followed shortly thereafter by the Prime Minister, for their flight to Delhi. In my next blog I will describe  how companies on the delegation are developing their business in India, and share some wider reflections on the impact of the visit.

The State of Gujarat, an hour’s flight north of Mumbai, can claim many important contributions to India. It was the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, another key leader of the independence movement and India’s first Home Minister, and Jamsetji Tata, the founder of the massive eponymous conglomerate,  hails from Navsari in Gujarat.

Gujarat is also a major contributor to the Indian economy. It has massive oil refineries in Jamnagar, including one of the largest in the world, and major engineering plants in Hazira where turbines and generators are manufactured  and exported  to numerous countries. More recently it has seen a major increase in the automotive sector, including a new plant near Ahmedabad for Tata’s famous $2000 car, the Nano.

So it was little wonder, when the State organised its biennial Vibrant Gujarat business jamboree in January, that many of India’s top business leaders gathered in the capital Gandhinagar.  The heads of some of the biggest companies  in the country were at the launch of the 3-day event, including Mukesh Ambani, his brother Anil, Ratan Tata and his successor Cyrus Mistry, Anand Mahindra, Shashi Ruia and many more. They all underlined the vital importance of the State to their companies.

It was also no wonder that many foreign companies and countries were present at the event. The largest foreign delegation was probably from Japan, one of the sponsors of the promotion, but the UK was not far behind with a range of companies backed by visits by the High Commissioner Sir James Bevan, Patricia Hewitt, the chair of the UK-India Business Council, who wowed a 2000 strong audience with her Gujarati, and a number of the deputy high commission team in Mumbai supporting our small trade office in Gujarat.

In a meeting we had with the State’s Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, the High Commissioner agreed there were a range of areas, including education, healthcare and research, as well as business, where there were big opportunities for collaboration. The interest in education was amply demonstrated by the throngs of potential applicants for UK universities at one of the two stands the UK had in pavilions  at Vibrant Gujarat.

Another area of potential collaboration is financial services. The Gujarat Government has pioneered a new Gujarat International Financial Services and Technology Centre (GIFT) in a landmark building  in Ahmedabad, and at a seminar Patricia Hewitt and I addressed there were over 300 business people looking at opportunities to develop international links with the City of London.

No-one who attended the Vibrant Gujarat’s events can have been left in any doubt of the State’s importance to the Indian economy.

 It also has a growing influence on the UK, with one of the largest groups – probably around 600,000 – of British – Indian families hailing originally from the State. That huge diaspora presents a major opportunity for UK businesses and universities to build on the close ties that exist between Gujarat and the UK.

I’m in no doubt our small trade office in Ahmedabad, opened some 12 years ago by Patricia Hewitt, is going to see a continuing increase in interest and activity as UK companies appreciate the range of opportunities in one of India’s most prosperous States.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson, British Deputy High Commissioner, Western India Peter Beckingham and Hugh Morris MD English Cricket

Many people in London, and other parts of the UK, think they know a good deal about the Mayor of the capital, Boris Johnson: judging from the number of British tourists who greeted him in hotels or on the streets of Mumbai he must also be one of our most widely recognised politicians.

Less well known is that the Mayor’s wife has strong connections to India, as her mother was originally from the Punjab.

When he was here on holiday with his wife some two years ago the Mayor gave up an evening to meet a group of top Indian executives, including for example the head of India’s largest IT outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services, to talk about their investments in London. He described the preparations for the Olympics, and promised to return afterwards on an official visit – assuming  the Games were a success, and he was re-elected!

Boris Johnson with English cricket team

As all Londoners know Boris was re-elected, and the Olympics were a huge success – and the Mayor kept his promise by visiting Mumbai last week. His timing was impeccable, arriving in the city as our office gave a reception sponsored generously by Jaguar and British Airways for the touring England cricket team.

As the London Times correspondent, Robin Pagnamenta wrote, the event was attended “by a bevy of figures from the worlds of Indian business and media”, who the whole of the England team mixed with for over two hours, engaging in conversation with cricket-mad Indians and putting up with great patience and good humour endless requests for photographs.

Boris didn’t escape the photographers’ attention either, and the next day there was a scrum of them to greet him, Lawrence Dallaglio and Kevin Pietersen for a visit to a charity, Magic Bus, founded by a Brit, Matthew Spacie, to support thousands of children from poorer communities. As well as providing some much needed sports equipment to Magic Bus, the visit could also serve to interest more high profile sportsmen from the UK in its work.

Business with London remained at the core of the visit, and from the sweltering dusty grounds next to the Port, and only a cricket ball’s throw from some of Mumbai’s worst slums, the Mayor and his business delegation went to call on the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to talk about developing closer links with London.

The delegation heard from officials of ambitious plans to build a metro in Mumbai, and discussed the possibility of  Transport for London sharing its experience and expertise with Mumbai.

Boris Johnson with Maharashtra Chief Minister

Transport also featured in subsequent  discussions with a senior group from the Tata company, with more positive news about the turnaround of Jaguar and Land Rover under the Indian conglomerate’s leadership, as well as expanding business in London for its TCS operation. Other companies who also held discussions with the Mayor, London & Partners and his delegation were Reliance Industries and Essar, who both have growing business in London, not least following Essar’s flotation of its energy business on the London Stock Exchange.

In his whirlwind visit to Mumbai, the Mayor spent a couple of hours having a business discussion with senior Bollywood producers where he learnt that London is a popular option for film shoots and was told about upcoming movies to be filmed there. He also joined 2 business breakfast sessions and launched a new Carbon Index at the Bombay stock Exchange, which was followed by a seminar whose theme was the way in which Indian companies are increasingly using London as base for business in third markets.

Jitesh Gadhia, Senior Managing Director of the Blackstone Group in London, and Chris Parsons from Herbert Smith Freehills, both gave compelling presentations on how London is growing in importance for Indian business.

After a final speech to the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Western India branch, chaired by one of the doyens of Indian business Adi Godrej, the Mayor sped round for an hour to see his wife’s hospitable family – who had also invited still more businesspeople with London links to meet him – before heading off for a 2am flight back to the capital.

He left behind a slightly exhausted but satisfied team in our office, pleased to know that the Mayor had impressed on many of Mumbai’s top industrialists that London is very much open for business with Mumbai – and happy to have worked for 48 hours with one of the UK’s most irrepressible politicians.

One of the most respected  journalists  in Mumbai told me afterwards he judged the visit to have engaged and appealed to this city’s business community in a way not many foreign visitors manage.

As the dramas of the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka unfurled last month, and the England Test series here begins next week, no-one living in India could fail to appreciate the importance of cricket to the nation. T20 Matches against big rival Pakistan, not to mention England and Australia, were watched by millions before India finally succumbed to the pressures of a rampant West Indies. The nation will again be glued to TV sets when  England or India walk out to bat. 

But another sport is quietly taking root in the heart of Mumbai, especially among its children. In January Manchester United opened its first soccer school in India, aimed at encouraging more interest in the UK’s number one sporting passion. With two enthusiastic and skilled pros from England, the school is training hundreds of children in the finer arts of the game. It has contracts with many of the more prestigious schools in Mumbai, and  in a separate development Manchester United are also involved in a scheme with an Indian mobile phone operator to bring children from poorer communities for training in England.

 The other weekend I had the chance to see the school firsthand, when they generously made it available to some of our staff and the children, and separately to hear from Ashley Cole about the scheme for training in the UK. Over 20 schoolchildren from mainly low income families were flown over to England this autumn.

If soccer is beginning to take off in India among the young, I was left in no doubt at another weekend event recently of the way in which IT skills have already made a deep impact on the next generation. Tata Consultancy Services invited me to attend, and present some prizes, to the participants in their nationwide IT WIZ Quiz. I went along with a suspicion that, as it was a Sunday morning, I would find a small room with at the most 50 teenage IT geeks. How wrong I was! The huge auditorium was heaving with probably a thousand 14-17 year olds, backing their schools to win the Mumbai stage of the competition. The atmosphere was electric.

But even more extraordinary was the display of IT knowledge the teams displayed. I admitted on stage at the end that I had never before struggled so much to answer the questions – for example “If Apple Inc is traded as AAPL on NNASDAQ, what is it traded as on NYSE?” or “What does Foxconn make for Amazon?” . The competition, superbly orchestrated and run with military precision, was a real insight into the way IT has got into the blood stream of so many Indian schoolchildren. No wonder India produces some of the best and largest IT companies.

I went home for Sunday lunch feeling I had an awful lot of IT catching up to do.

No-one in India exemplifies ‘The Power of We’ more than Mahatma Gandhi, even over 60 years after his death. He sought to improve the conditions of the poorest and to lead one of the world’s first non-violent mass movements, first in South Africa and then in India.

Hundreds of books have been written about his influence on the world’s second largest country. Since I came to Mumbai nearly three years ago I can recall at least three: an absorbing, albeit controversial biography ‘Great Soul‘ by distinguished New York Times editor Joseph Lelyveld, a more intimate account  of his life, with anecdotes from his grandchildren,  by British writer Graham Turner, and most recently a book comparing Gandhi’s famous spinning wheel with the Internet.  

So there is no need for me to add even more words than necessary about Gandhi. But his power still resonates, not only by books about him, but in other ways of  which I am sure he would approve. I had the good fortune to take part in an event this month to mark his birth anniversary on 2 October.

For the second year running Footsteps4Good took place in Mumbai, the first having been inaugurated personally by Gandhi’s great grandson Tushar.

Walkers and runners, who all made a donation to an NGO of their choice, took part in a 10 km event around Mumbai’s new business district, the Bandra Kurla Complex.

Footsteps was inspired by a 360 km trek that my wife, with huge support from the Association of British Scholars in Baroda,  undertook in November 2010 to follow the route identical to that of Gandhi’s famous Salt March to Dandi in Gujarat in 1930, which was one of the turning points in his movement against the British authorities. The trek raised over £100,000 for NGOs in Mumbai and Gujarat, and many people requested an opportunity  to take part in something similar but on a smaller scale.

In its own modest way Footsteps, which jumped from 700 to 2700 participants this year, is demonstrating vividly ‘The Power of We’. Sponsored principally by the ever generous Tata Group, who brought alone over 800 people  to raise funds for their cancer hospital in Kolkata, as well as Reliance Industries, Cox and Kings, HSBC, GSK and Aava Water, in one morning Footsteps raised over £60,000 for charities ranging from a shelter for the children of Mumbai’s sex workers to Magic Bus, providing recreation for slum dwellers.

As Boman Irani, one of Mumbai’s most famous Bollywood stars said when he inaugurated Footsteps  this year, it demonstrates how a movement can capture the imagination of people, and allow them to be a small contributor to improving people’s lives – a  vivid and telling example on the streets of Mumbai of ‘The Power of We’.

Weekends in Mumbai, once the monsoon has passed, can involve a variety of activities: walks along the 5km Marine Drive past the art deco buildings and the landmark Oberoi hotel, brunch in one of the expanding range of cafes and restaurants around the town, a round of golf on what must count as one of more unusual but enjoyable courses in the heart of any mega city, or shopping in one of the new malls.

Peter Beckingham at the ‘Collective’ outlet

I managed some of those and more recently, while taking in as well a number of British-focused events around the city. First off was a chance to see a range of UK fashion at “The Collective” outlet in one of Mumbai’s most popular malls, Palladium, on the site of one of the city’s former textile mills. The Collective, a tiny part of the massive Birla Group’s empire, offers a range of clothing for men and women.

Pitched firmly at the middle class and above, its creative director Nageshwar left me in no doubt that he is pleased to showcase a range of British products. Highlighted in the store recently was a display of Ted Baker clothes and accessories, taking pride of place for the weekend alongside Hackett and Fred Perry apparel.

From the Palladium it was a dash – or to be more precise a crawl, in Mumbai’s Saturday evening traffic – to the southern end of the city, to one of its original, smaller landmarks, The Bombay Yacht Club. Recently completely renovated to give the Club something of the flavour of what it must have been like in its former glory, with wood panelling and windows like those of ships, the club was host for the evening to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz was meeting alumni from the university, for the second time in 12 months, and he left no-one in any doubt that he and his team would be back to Mumbai to pin down specific new research collaborations with Indian partners, as well as to encourage even more Indian students to bid for a place alongside the over 200 who are already studying or researching at the university.

Lord Ganesh immersion

Of course there is a lot more to Mumbai than British-focused events, and my weekend was rounded off with a visit to one of the city’s teeming commercial quarters, to see some of the hundreds of Ganesh idols produced with loving care by local groups to mark the enormously popular 11 day festival of Ganesh the elephant-headed God who is the guardian deity of Maharashtra State.

We managed to get in, together with hundreds of excited Hindu adults and children, to view about a dozen of the larger and more exotic displays. All the idols will be immersed in the seas surrounding Mumbai, in one of the most colourful and vibrant events of the year, with hundreds of thousands of Mumbaikars heading for Chowpatty and other beaches around the city.

Next weekend: two more British icons, of automobiles and sport – Rolls Royce Cars and Manchester United!

Although for millions of Indians visiting London is not even a remote possibility,  everyone here with access to a television, radio or newspaper will have been aware, however vaguely, of the 2012 Olympic Games going on in a city far away. It may  have been difficult for many to comprehend the exhilaration of the 16 days’ events without access to satellite transmissions, but at least they will have followed the highs and lows of their country’s  athletes.

Some commentators have claimed that the Games may mark a turning point for Indian participation, with its athletes bringing home  a 100 per cent increase in medals, admittedly from a low base, compared to Bejing.

Mary Kom

There have been wonderful examples of individual heroism and triumph. My own favourite was the battling Mary Kom, who was  born into a comparatively poor family in North East India, but has risen to claim a Bronze medal  in the first ever womens’ boxing event.

Kom’s victory has even got the sittings rooms of middle class Mumbaikers exchanging notes knowledgeably about the finer details of boxing, which was probably a sport they had never even watched before!

The steely cool of rapid fire marksman Gagan Narang brought India its first medal of the Games, and the country’s many accomplished badminton players were delighted by the young, focused Saina Nehwal’s achievements in securing  an Olympic medal.

Before the London Games there had been speculation – as there was before the Sydney Games,  with which I was involved – that queues at airports would become nightmarish (as regrettably they had been for a time in the Spring) or traffic would grind to a halt. Security scares were also frequent. In the event these predictions proved false, and both the Indian media and the business community have been the first to praise the delivery of the Games in such an efficient and dazzling manner.

Before the end of the Games, the popular British Business Group and the Deputy High Commission in Mumbai arranged events to celebrate their success. BBG members were able to view highlights of the opening ceremony, and at a reception sponsored by British Airways one of India’s top businessmen, Mr S  Ramadorai, Vice Chairman of  Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of India’s and the world’s largest IT service providers, gave a fascinating account of his own London 2012 experience.

Saina Nehwal

Mr Ramadorai described how from landing at Heathrow to clearing immigration took him an unprecedented and painless 20 minutes or less, and travelling to and from the Games using the Javelin train was a similarly rapid experience.

He was also one of the Indian representatives who met our Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and attended the Global Investment Conference and a separate seminar, both arranged by UKTI, on education and skills -  for which Mr Ramadorai was a key participant as Adviser (with the rank of Cabinet Minister) for the Indian Prime Minister’s National Skill Development Council. Both conferences, said Mr Ramadorai, provided some helpful insights into UK and international investment and education developments.

Mr Ramadorai was one of some 60 Indian senior industrialists, one of the largest groups from overseas, who with encouragement from our UKTI team here took part in business events around the Olympics. Their attendance at the Olympics, and the financial support Indian companies are starting to provide athletes, is a sure sign that come Rio the Indian mark on the Olympics will be bigger than ever.

But before then both our countries will be engaged in another epic sporting event, with the England cricket team heading to Mumbai in late October for a four match Test Series and 50 over and 20/20 competitions. India will be keen to get their revenge for their loss in the last series in England. As in London we hope to attract the Indian business community to one or more events marking what should be a memorable sporting series  and our growing business ties.

Goa could hardly be a bigger contrast with its neighbouring State of Maharashtra. Unlike Maharashtra’s huge population there are less than 1.5M in Goa’s attractive State, and its capital Panjim has around 115,000 inhabitants at the most.

Most visitors to India associate Goa primarily with its fine beaches, exotic tropical terrain and Portuguese ancestry. But as the new Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar,  made clear to me recently, it is a lot more than that, with some of the country’s most progressive educational institutes, an important base for a number of industries, especially in pharmaceuticals, and a significant mining and shipping industry.

I talked with the Chief Minister about some of the areas where UK companies might make more inroads, and we identified infrastructure, waste management and sea transport as among the areas there could be scope for collaboration. I’m pleased to say that I know of some UK companies in the infrastructure space which are already looking at some useful business prospects. There is a small but active British Business Group (BBG) branch in Goa under its enthusiastic chair Beryl Nasse, which meets periodically, and they are keen to support UK companies looking to capitalise on any opportunities in the State, which also include  medical tourism and entertainment and leisure facilities.

When I visited Goa recently, as well as on previous occasions, I have had an opportunity to see some of its largest private businesses. The Chowgule Group is one of them, and their range of interests include shipbuilding, mining, education and, most recently, port building. The Group has completed the first stage of a new port facility between Goa and Mumbai, and is optimistic it will be able to capitalise on the large volumes of manufactured goods leaving India, especially from the Pune region.

The Chowgule Group has some links with the UK, especially in shipbuilding, has a small ship broking office in London, and is also keen to establish ties with some UK universities with its popular and highly regarded College in Margao.  Its director studied at Sussex University. Among its new plans are the development of a maritime course, building on the expertise in shipping in Goa, and again there could be openings for UK expertise.

The closest existing UK links with Goa are, as the Chief Minister needed no reminding, in tourism. For many years the UK was the largest source of foreign tourists, with British visitors taking advantage of plentiful package flights and affordable hotels to enjoy Goa’s beaches and regional cuisine. More recently the advent of new charters has propelled Russia to the number one slot, over-taking the 115,000 British travellers annually  to Goa. British tour operators have indicated they would like to develop   upmarket packages in Goa, which is certainly showing no let up in hotel expansion.

Some British visitors have been so charmed by Goa that they have decided to invest in property in the State. The numbers do not compare to   British purchasers in Spain,  France and other Mediterranean destinations, but regrettably some of the UK buyers have also discovered , like others nearer to Britain, that this is not a straightforward business. The High Commission knows of many instances where purchasers have bought a property and have become embroiled in drawn out and frequently expensive litigation in Goa.

The new Chief Minister indicated that his Government would try and look favourably on some of the more difficult cases, so long as the property was of a purely private nature, and the High Commission’s Consular Directorate  in Delhi is about to put out an update on our work over this difficult and stressful issue. Hopefully, although there are unlikely to be any quick fixes, the new Government’s interest in the issue will help ensure progress for at least some caught up in disputes. In the meantime the best advice is to take great care before rushing into a long term purchase agreement in Goa, certainly no less than you would do in the UK, and, most important, secure independent legal advice. If it looks too easy, it probably isn’t being done right!

Inevitably some UK visitors have also experienced difficulties – stolen passports and petty crime being the most frequent– for which we have a small British Nationals’ Assistance team, who have recently moved to new offices in Panjim, to try and help. Tragically they are also sometimes called on  to help with some high profile murder cases and prisoner issues, and the Chief Minister left me and my consular colleagues in no doubt that he intends to take a rigorous line in tackling crime in Goa, although  investigations and progress on routine work such as compiling toxicology reports continues to be lengthy.

For most short-term visitors to Goa the State offers wonderful opportunities for a relaxing holiday. As it has among the highest GDP of any Indian State, and its new Government appears determined to enhance the infrastructure and investment opportunities, it could just be a State also worth taking a side-trip to for business purposes, as a few UK companies are discovering.