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Santanu Sanyal

LONDON, Oct. 8

BRITISH Trade International (BTI) has identified nine sectors which it considers hold out opportunities for investments by British business looking for profitable ventures in India. These are IT, automotive industry, agribusiness, telecom, healthcare, financial services, education and training, environment technology and leisure and tourism.

Giving this information here on Monday, Mr Mike Connor, Head of South Asia Unit International Group of BTI, told Business Line that BTI has also identified a few others as "warming up sectors" where the potential was going to be realised in due course. These were security and safety (covering intruder alarm, sophisticated lock systems for airport and port security) and biotech.

Mr Connor seemed particularly bullish about the future of the India's automotive industry which, in his opinion, was going to be a major growth area, catering not only to the Indian market but also acting as sourcing points for other countries. "We participated in the auto exhibition in Delhi held some time ago and are in constant touch with the concerned trade associations," he said.

However, the infrastructure bottleneck continued to be the cause of concern. "Also, the government intervention should be as minimum as possible," he said. India's most successful IT sector has minimum government intervention, he observed, adding, "side by side, we all know what has happened to the much-trumpeted fast track power projects."

To be successful it was not necessary to be big, he said and referred to some of the small but very successful ventures, some run by even husband-wife team. "These units do not hit the headlines but have to their credit records of impeccable performace," he said but declined to identify them.

The British business, he made it clear, was not afraid of taking risks, even big risks, but would like to be assured to big returns at the same time. Unfortunately, in their perception, the risk return ratio in India was not working to their advantage. He particularly used the expression like "time lag in reputation" and said, "the confidence gets hit even by the reports from time to time about escalating tension between India and Pakistan."

Indian policy-makers, he emphasised, should ask themselves why even a country like Czechoslovakia, much smaller than India in every respect, attracted a much larger FDI.

"We are really looking forward to real good news, i.e., the concrete examples of successful new British ventures in India as it will send the right message across and the consequent benefits will be unquantifiably large," Mr Connor added.

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