UK to tap NRIs to build bridges towards India

The report focusing on Birmingham in the West Midlands, with a large presence of people of Indian-origin, found that help from NRI businessmen could prove vital for companies that found entering the Indian market ‘too difficult’.

Trade between the UK and India is currently worth pounds 8.7 billion a year, and growing at a rate of ten per cent per annum.

“For some West Midlands companies and organisations, India currently falls into the ‘too difficult’ category – one to watch for now, but not yet familiar or easy enough for those more used to the regulation and certainty of Europe,” the report said.

But the West Midlands business groups with members who already understood India well, such as the Minority Business Forum and the Institute of Asian Businesses, could play an important role in helping other firms and offering advice to bodies such as the chambers of commerce, it said.

“It is important to ensure that both ethnic and non-ethnic business groups interact fully with each other and share information as widely as possible, so that the relative business advantages of each group may be shared and developed,” it said.

The document also set out plans to establish an India Coordination Group to oversee a strategy to make the most of trade and inward investment opportunities. West Midlands universities will also be targeted to ensure they are making most of the potential market for their intellectual property and facilities in international markets such as India.

Byrn, who is an MP from Birmingham, said: “The number of Indian companies in the West Midlands has doubled since 2006, and this year we saw the biggest deal of all – Tata’s acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover made it the largest foreign investor in the region, employing over 13,000 staff. I saw on my own trip to India earlier this year that these signs are only a glimmer of what could lie ahead,” he said.

Peter Luff, deputy chair of the Parliamentary All-Party India Group, called the present time as “really good for British small and medium sized businesses to think about engaging with India, where a huge and rapidly-growing middle class is hungry for goods and services.”

In an editorial, Birmingham Post, a leading newspaper from the region, said the West Midlands is home to one in five British Asians, including many highly successful entrepreneurs, who in many cases are already doing business successfully with India, and may have family or personal connections in both continents.

“So it makes sense for ministers and Advantage West Midlands to give them as much support as possible – and also to recruit them to help guide the rest of the region’s business community”, it said.