As the Indian PM becomes the first in over 30 years to visit Silicon Valley, it is a great joy to see at long last how the Indian Government has embraced entrepreneurs. When PM Modi visit the UK next month, he will see British entrepreneurial talent at its best in both London, and the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ just as the Chinese President will this month.
For the UK, the love of entrepreneurs has seen a recent ramping up of activity with India and China.
I write to you after my recent visit to India co-inciding with Ministerial visits by Minister Sajid Javid, Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills and also Minister Francis Maude, Minister for Trade and Investment.
I spoke with Francis Maude in Delhi at a reception hosted by the UK India Business Council, on whose Board I sit, about how the Government is pushing the marketplace to do more to attract Venture Capital into the UK (through the Government’s revitalised Venture Capital Unit) from around the world to invest in British technology, British intellectual property and make sure those British companies become Global.
But, from an India perspective we spoke about how so many entrepreneurs from India are coming to the UK to establish their businesses here and then go global.
We discussed how the market failure is that given how friendly the UK is as a place to do business there is not even more sources of finance, and hence why the Government rightly gets involved in closing that market gap through the VC unit with whom I work, but also attracts the best global intellectual capital, entrepreneurial talent to the UK through programmes such as the Government’s Global Entrepreneur Programme of which I am a part, by making the deals to land the companies here.
Business is not easy. It is not with the wave of the hand that we can get orders for companies, but showing these entrepreneurs and investors that there is money to be made by being in Britain, and how to do it, hand holding them, that we can build an ever more entrepreneurial UK.
It is becoming ever clearer it is the entrepreneur who will through building SMEs will be the driving force of wealth creation, of employment creation. Sure, the shipbuilder makes the headlines because they employ in one go hundreds of persons, but the vast majority of people work for SMEs.
The UK through the Government recognising so much has to be done, and in finding the best talent to work with to make it happen, ensures just as Narendra Modi was doing in Silicon Valley, that that the entrepreneurial genes and their intellectual property and capital surrounding them comes to their home country – for us that means Government rightly ramping up efforts to reach out to India and China. The British are after all the masters at this.
