Rumour has it that Prime Minister Brown will not follow the ritual of his predecessors by making his first overseas trip as PM to Washington.
Rather, he will go to Delhi or Beijing. British entrepreneurs should be thinking along the same lines. (Note that our company of the year, Wolfson Microelectronics – one of the great British success stories of the past 20 years and led by our Entrepreneur of the Year David Milne – opened an office in Bangalore earlier in 2006.)
There are some obvious problems of doing business in India – the miserable infrastructure and problematic labour laws, for starters – but it has the widespread use of the English language, a familiar legal system, and a long-established, private sector, entrepreneurial economy that is being unleashed.
Here are just a couple of opportunities. Look to India if your business has expertise in the handling, packaging, transportation and logistics of perishable products – as the agricultural sector diversifies, it badly needs better integration with the rest of the economy.
Look to India if your business has expertise in water management – with a rapidly increasing population, the country could become “water-stressed” if it doesn’t address this issue now.
Alternatively, look to India if you want to sell your business. Indian companies are either sitting on mountains of cash or have very supportive banks. They want to go shopping – and they like buying British. (They aren’t just being sentimental. It’s much, much easier for an Indian executive to secure a visitor’s visa to the UK than anywhere else in Europe.)
INCAT was another British success story. Jointly headquartered in Bristol and Detroit, listed on AIM, it provided software services to help manufacturing companies improve their product development processes.
At the end of 2005, it was bought by Tata. Yes, that’s the same Tata that six years previously bought Tetley Tea, and which in 2005 acquired one of the UK’s most illustrious names in the chemical industry, Brunner Mond; and that is currently battling it out with the Brazilians for Corus, the Anglo-Dutch company formerly known as British Steel.
If your business is in textiles, automotive components or pharmaceuticals, you may well have received approaches already. But I wouldn’t rule out any sector. In the years to come, India will be the crucible in which many British entrepreneurs will buy or be bought – far more so than China.
Stuart Rock is Editorial Director of Caspian Publishing.