Mumbai attacks: the impact on British businesses in the region

by Catherine Woods - Thursday, 27th November 2008 -

Ranjan Singh, the founder of UK internet start-up isango!, says the way India deals with the terror attacks in Mumbai will be crucial to ensuring the country remains attractive to foreign companies.

Eighty per cent of isango!’s staff are based near Delhi, working in areas such as technology, customer service, finance and product management. However, one of the other founders of the business, Aseem Sadana, is currently in Mumbai.

“He’s staying at another premium hotel that could have been a target but, thank God, it wasn’t,” Singh says. “He’s still in Mumbai but his meetings have been cancelled and a big conference on online travel that he was due to attend has also been cancelled. Hopefully he’ll make his flight back to the UK tomorrow.”

Singh says it’s been business as usual for isango!: “Everyone has turned up and we’ve been sharing messages, good wishes and condolences. Thankfully no one has been impacted by this directly.”

He admits some people may cancel planned trips to the country but is hopeful the impact on British businesses operating in India will be minimal. “Memories are short and human beings around the world are very resilient by nature,” Singh says. “But India must deal with this very, very effectively.”

The Islamist terrorists responsible for the attacks are believed to be targeting British and American citizens but Singh argues the media must not focus on this: Indian officials have confirmed only one Briton is among the more-than-one-hundred people who have died.

Singh says: “The headlines in some tabloids are saying that the terrorists are hunting for Britons. That sort of thing will have a big impact on India in the short-term.”