Towards ‘unbeatable combinations’

After an eventful visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to India last week, I find myself focusing on the one word that in my view accurately describes their recent Mumbai visit. The word here is ‘social’: not just because their visit to Mumbai reached its climax at Todi Mill Social, a young and hip bar and workspace reminiscent of London’s own Shoreditch area, but also because their itinerary was a balance of the elements that define Mumbai society. With the threads of business, charitable work, culture, architecture, music, sport, movies and glamour woven into the tapestry of their visit, it was a programme with a good social mix.

It was at Todi Mill Social that they launched the Tech Rocketship Awards: we couldn’t have asked for a better lift-off for what is one of the cornerstones of the hugely successful ‘GREAT for Collaboration’ campaign. This campaign was launched by prime ministers Narendra Modi and David Cameron to showcase existing great collaborations between the UK and India, and inspire new ones. The flagship Tech Rocketship Awards, run by UK Trade and Investment, aims to identify India’s best startups and provide them with the opportunity to internationalise using the UK as a launch pad. With ‘business royalty’ figures such as Anand Mahindra and Mohandas Pai standing alongside the Duke and Duchess to inaugurate the awards this year, we expect the competition to be bigger than ever.

All of this has happened in the context of a flourishing UK-India commercial relationship: deals in excess of £9 billion (that span a wide range of sectors including insurance services, finance, healthcare, energy and information technology) were agreed between the two countries during Modi’s UK visit in November 2015.

The UK continues to be the largest G20 investor in India, and there are more Indian companies investing in the UK than the rest of Europe combined. Modi has called the UK and India “an unbeatable combination”: you only have to see the image of the Duke in the Mahindra simulator, part of the e-racing team Mahindra operate out of the UK, to understand the depth of that statement.

During his address to the UK parliament Modi said: “Strong as our partnership is, for a relationship such as ours, we must set higher ambitions. We are two democracies; two strong economies; and, two innovative societies.” The far-reaching collaboration between UK startup What3Words and Pollinate Energy, a local organisation that provides lighting to rural and underprivileged areas using What3Words’ mapping technology, symbolises this higher ambition which has been made possible by collaboration between India and the UK. The recent steps by the Indian government to liberalise FDI, improve the ease of doing business and launch of Start-up India, Make in India, Skill India, Digital India and smart cities programmes are all positive steps that make great collaborations easier.

The Global Innovation Index (GII) has retained the UK’s standing above the US, Singapore and Germany third time in a row. In India, UK partners offer some of the most innovative products to boost profit, increase customer satisfaction and grow your business. Four out of the top ten universities in the world are in the UK. This is just one example of why the UK is a leading destination for research, innovation and growth, making it an ideal place for India’s best and brightest startups to set up and grow internationally. Many have already done this and continue to do this with India emerging as the third largest source of FDI for the UK last year.

So, a few days on from the launch of our young entrepreneurs’ competition, we can look to a bright future of partnerships. Applications for the competition, The Tech Rocketship Awards, are now open. The winners will be taken to the UK to meet the business and investor community there. In the coming months we look forward to discovering many more of the exciting new companies and new ideas which are being developed in India — the next generation of ‘unbeatable combinations’!

The writer is director-general of UK Trade and |Investment in India

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