During visit to Myanmar, the Chairman of BBG Chennai was able to attend the 2nd meeting of the BBG just started there. The steering member is Tony Picon of Colliers. A strong group of 35+ met at the British Club in the aptly named “Irrawaddy Arms”. Andrew Rickards CEO of the well-established Yoma Strategic Holdings presented his group as a conglomerate in the country with long-term objectives and provided some less-known insights into this newly opening up country Tina Singhsacha, Chief Rep of StanChart sponsored the evening and spoke of her bank’s long association since 1863 with old Burma
The 16th May 2013 Monthly meeting had our member, Petrofac’s General Manager, Mr KRSR Krishna presenting his Group’s very impressive growth as also the phenomenal rise of his Chennai operations delivering services and staff to several group locations. Petrofac has over 1100 staff in Chennai of 16,500 internationally. Petrofac is UK’s 5th most admired companies (for its capacity to innovate /use of corporate assets/ability to attract & retain top talent).
The Chairman updated members on Chennai’s planned Trade Mission to UK 24-28 June, 2013 as also on membership development. Mr P M Belliappa then introduced the Guest Speaker, Vikram Kapur IAS the Principal Secretary & Commissioner of the Corporation of Chennai who has been in Chennai over 25 years. He finds it a very “live-able” city despite it’s own huge expansion in the past two decades.
Mr Kapur presented Chennai as the oldest city corporation (some 370 years) and the 4th largest in the country. He set out the extensive and complicated matrix of it’s operations with 25,000 employees and 200 elected officials. In it’s current development it has become a major industrial hub and a centre for IT & ITES services. It also houses huge BPOs for banking and insurance industries. In another aspect, Chennai is a huge educational centre of specialisations and quality. Again it has grown it’s healthcare industry and receives the largest numbers of foreign patients in India.
In his presentation Mr Kapur showed some of the plans for re-designing many of our streets with pavement innovations and spaces for hawkers / vendors. Larger roads are to be re-engineered to include parking and spaces for electric junction-boxes and other facilities. His presentation concluded with a unique educational program for teaching English to young children using services of teams of volunteers in classrooms provided by the Corporation. The members were most grateful to the Commissioner for providing them with such an interesting story on the city’s civic body.
Mr Kapur has been kind enough to send a copy of his presentation on a pen-drive to BBG: any members interested may please contact Ms Latha at BBG’s Offices for a copy
The Chairman attended a lively Networking Reception of BCCT and met some of it’s 620 members in the Up & Above Bar of Okura Prestige, Wireless Road on 25th April 2013. BCCT have been in Thailand since 1946 and work closely with all the Thai Chambers of Commerce and represent members views and requests to Government and civic bodies.
They hold over 100 events annually and relationships with UK remain strong having been built up over 200 years. Christie Cherian met BCCT’s Executive Director, Greg Wadkins and the Vice-Chairman, Simon Mathews.
The evening started with our patron, Mike Nithavrianakis sharing his opening remarks. He shared the recent ministerial visits as well as the upcoming ministerial and trade visits in May and June. This was followed by views on UKTI by Barry Lowen, National Director, UKTI who was visiting Chennai. Richard Heald, CEO, UKIBC then shared the plan on British Business Centres across India and the role they will play in supporting British companies wanting to set up in India.
The first presentation of the day was by our member Aravind Srivatsan, Partner, KPMG on UK-India Business and the current state of trade between the two countries. He spoke at length about the acquisitions between both countries.
The guest speaker of the day was Mr. T. Shivaraman, MD &CEO, Shriram EPC Pvt Ltd and President, Madras Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI). He spoke about his role at MCCI as well as the power sector. An interactive Q&A session followed the presentations.
On 18th March, Christie Cherian and Peter Spackman officially visited Frontier Lifeline Hospital to see the wonderful work being done by Founder and CEO, Dr K M Cherian. Frontier Lifeline Hospital is a very impressive state-of-the-art cardiac hospital. Dr Cherian himself showed visitors around the hospital. They spent time looking at the ICUs for adults and children where patients recover from surgeries (25% of their patients are from overseas). Dr. Cherian also presented his project on a ground-breaking medicare village on a SEZ-site oulining his vision for scientific studies in the medical field.
The visit was rounded of with BBG Chennai presenting Dr. Cherian with a contribution to commence a fund towards the continued good work in pediatric cardiac surgery for poor and needy children. You can read more about BBG’s social initiatives here.
BBG – Bangalore now moves into formation stage with the right founding members coming into place. During a visit to Bangalore, Christie Cherian called on Ian Felton, Deputy High Commissioner, BDHC, Bangalore and met a couple of potential conveners to put BBG – Bangalore into play with Chennai’s offer of help and assistance. The Queen’s Birthday celebrations on 15th March 2013 hosted by Ian Felton was also an occasion to bring together around 25 potential members. A meeting is planned for 23rd March to initiate the activities.
BBG Chennai have offered all support to the Conveners Sai Prakash and K C Janardhan with best wishes for the success of this new BBG. In line with BBGs reciprocity arrangements, invitations have been extended to potential Bangalore members to attend our meetings on April 18th and May 16th
Contacts for BBG in Bangalore:
Sai Prakash +919844327783 / saierin@hotmail.com
KC Janardhan +919845186482 / kcjanardhan555@gmail.com
On 6th of March, the British Deputy High Commission (South India) hosted a reception to celebrate the birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The reception was attended by many BBG members apart from various other dignatories. During the course of the evening Mike took the opportunity to round up the events anchored and organised by the BDHC and UKTI. He spoke of the successful Olympics 2012, PM’s visit to India and various other visits by Ministers. Mike also had a special mention of BBG Chennai and its successful National Conference in September 2012. Mike congratulated the entire BBG team and Christie for anchoring the activities successfully. He added that BBG Chennai has been striving towards a wider range of activities to improve bilateral trade and commerce. The evening ended with fellowship and a concert by Oscar winner, Tanvi Shah and her band.
For the benefit of BBG Members and ASA clients, ASA & Associates (a BBG member) conducted a very useful seminar reviewing the recently announced Budget. ASA’s Ajay Sethi gave an insightful presentation on India’s current economic position followed by Sunil Arora’s highlights on the Budget. Attendees found the information extremely helpful. Capt. Ramaswamy of Sea Team provided their Training Centre for the event.
Last week, Mike Nithavrianakis accompanied the High Commissioner, James Bevan to Trivandrum. Although this was Sir James’s first visit to Trivandrum, he has visited Kerala before; most prominently when he led the largest ever trade delegation to the State for Emerging Kerala in September last year. Last week’s visit included calls on the Chief Minister, the Director-General of Police and ISRO. The High Commissioner also visited Technopark and had a very good meeting with UK firms and Indian investors. Many thanks to BBG committee member Vijay Kumar (Test House) for organising the gathering and to Rakesh Gupta of Allianz Cornhill (ACIS) for hosting it at their premises.
The High Commissioner was delighted not only to meet lots of UK firms doing business in Kerala, but he was very happy to see BBG Chairman, Christie and several Chennai-based colleagues, including R. Jeevanandham, R. Balajee, Dev Nair and Shajee Varghese present. The networking reception on the evening of 27th February was a very useful opportunity for the High Commission to reach a wider section of the business community and it was to terrific to see the BBG strongly represented. As James Bevan later tweeted “Great visit last week to Thiruvananthapuram. Saw Indian Space Research Organisation & Padmanabhaswamy temple, 2 sides of incredible India”
BBG Hyderabad was launched on 21st February as planned, on a night when Hyderabad was targeted by terrorists who exploded two bombs in busy shopping area, killing 16 and injuring 120 innocent people. BBG Chennai Member, Gerry Duggan steering this new BBG decided to wait and see how many people would turn up and at 9pm proceeded with the launch when 75 guests had arrived.
Mr. Richard Hyde, the British Deputy High Commissioner Hyderabad called for a minute’s silence and then proceeded to explain how he saw BBGH assisting BDHC and UKTI in their task of getting UK business into Hyderabad and Indian businesses to the UK. Gerry Duggan made a presentation outlining the operations and aims of BBGH and how important it was to attract actual UK business connecting members to BBGH. Also called on candidates to become part of the new Management Committee at the next meeting 21st March 2013 at Taj Deccan.
Mary Priya Paul then closed the meeting with thanks to all the sponsors and attendees while passing sympathies to the people of Hyderabad who had suffered as a result of the bombs. Drinks and snacks were provided over Fellowship. Of the 75 guests, it was felt that 30-35 members would register formally before next meeting.
Gerry Duggan
Steering Member – BBG Hyderabad
