From Manchester to Mumbai – Bringing life to new Indian retail outlets

My aim for this new blog is to provide snapshots every two weeks from Mumbai illustrating the vibrancy of UK–Indian business relations.  I am fortunate to meet in my job hundreds of UK and Indian businesspeople, ranging from the heads of some of the UK’s largest companies,  and India’s ( and the world’s!) richest businessmen, to first time exporters and new investors in the UK.  I hope these short accounts of some of  my inter-reactions with them will help to stimulate still more business and investment, and shed a little light on the challenges and opportunities in India’s commercial capital of 18 million people, and growing.

I’ll begin with an example of how a smallish UK company, PhotoLink, which I’ve met in Britain and Mumbai, is growing its business. They are a classic case of perseverance and would make a tremendous case study for the BBC’s Ad-Venture Capitalists series. Not as glamorous as getting on the television, but I certainly regard them as a good example of how UK SMEs can flourish in Mumbai.

Last week I saw their founder David Walter and MD Jayne Riley at their hotel in mid-town Mumbai for breakfast. After a healthy dose of Indian mangoes, in season now, they told me how they had decided that their design company from Manchester, which has produced catalogues for John Lewis and the FA, should look at the Indian market, which they considered would provide better openings than China.   After some false, and expensive, starts they found a strong partner in Mumbai and are shortly opening an office here with some ten staff and two non-executive directors. I hope to see the new office soon. They have picked up some notable business.  Not content with John Lewis, they were commissioned by India’s largest company Tata, (owners of Jaguar, Land Rover, Corus and Tetley Tea, to name a few) to produce a website for a new chain of retail stores – Westside. Not bad going for a company with just three years’ experience here.

By nice coincidence I also saw last week Noel Tata, head of the group’s retail business, Trent,  to discuss his company’s  plans for capturing some of the spending power of the growing middle class in India.  I put in a word for PhotoLink, as they requested. He was well aware of their work for Westside, and also some rebranding   they have completed for the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai’s up-market music and theatre venue – where the London Symphony Orchestra played in March.

I willl write more about Tata’s exciting developments with UK retailers shortly.  Hopefully there will be more opportunities for PhotoLink too with Westside as they both grow their businesses in Mumbai and India.