India offers Northern Powerhouse firms access to ‘massive’ opportunities

The boss of the biggest business organisation in India is calling on the North to take advantage of emerging opportunities across the subcontinent.

Dr A Didar Singh, the secretary general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), said Northern companies need to connect with the thousands of Indian firms ready to do business.

Speaking at the UK Northern Powerhouse International Conference and Exhibition in Manchester, he said: “Our main emphasis is to encourage small and medium businesses to come to India to connect up, to use [FICCI] resources, to meet our membership of 250k businesses, which is one of the largest groups in the world, and access our great opportunities.

“We can make our network available to you, we will help you with matchmaking, we have Invest India and we will help you meet our small and medium enterprises that need the support.”

He added: “The Northern Powerhouse needs to help power countries like India, so do come and connect with us and let’s see what we can do.”

Speaking further, Dr Singh encouraged Northern delegations to visit India, meet sector peers and see the opportunities for themselves.

He explained: “There are literally millions of potential business partners in India and you will find connectivity and engagement that you can enhance and hopefully make great business happen.”

The FICCI boss went on to highlight the sectors offering the greatest potential for growth:

He said: “Food processing and retail is a massive area, as is defence. India has the largest import bill in the world and we now need to start manufacturing within the country so the emphasis is for our private sector to find partners in the UK and other countries.

“The third very big area is renewables, which is booming and we have the single largest renewable programme in the world with a target of 168 gigawatts in renewables and its actually happening, mostly solar, but also wind and hydro and nuclear.

“And the last area is general manufacturing and this is particularly the reason we have come [to the UK].”

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