The UK India Business Council (UKIBC) is appointing a consultant to help it identify cities beyond the Mumbai-Bangalore-Delhi round that have potential for two-way ties between British and Indian business, according to Sharon Bamford, chief executive of the UKIBC.
?At the moment, we are looking at second-tier cities, next generation cities in India, where the opportunities for British businesses lie,? Bamford told FE on her first visit to Kolkata recently. ?We are going to commission research to look at the opportunities and then we will map those back to UK regions, to say, a region like Cambridge, or Newcastle, or Cardiff. We want to have tangible opportunities to map back,? she said.
Bamford said that so far businesses have been looking at just Mumbai, Bangalore and other hotspots, but it is time to tap the potential in the smaller cities. ?The study will be commissioned by the end of February and we want the results by the end of August. We are waiting for a consultant to tell us which cities to work on,? she said.
Bamford said the market is getting crowded and the capabilities have not been exploited in many other cities. ?They are the next-generation cities, rather than second-tier cities, where we can build long-term relationships into the next century rather than the next financial year,? she said.
Armed with its initial funding of a million pounds from the UK government, the UKIBC, a much more expanded avatar of the Indo-British Partnership Network, aims to rustle up matching funds from the private corporations that are its members so that it has an annual budget of 2 million pounds. In the meanwhile, the UKIBC is building up an infrastructure.
?The most important aspect is first of all the staff, the ability to deliver. You can set goals, make promises, but unless you have first class delivery and first class customer service, you are not a business. So we will invest in very, very good staff,? Bamford said. The UKIBC would also spend on projects to deliver good research and evidence. Backing all this would be a new , with statistics, information and advice.
?We have just launched a UK India Business angel network bringing together the early-stage investors and the young, ambitious companies that want to come to the UK, want to come to India. The response we have got from Kolkata has been phenomenal,? she said.