Coronavirus won’t stop Sheffield city region’s Indian ambition
The Sheffield City Region (SCR) will today launch a new scheme designed to increase business opportunities with the fast growing Indian market, despite the ongoing global issues around Covid-19
The new India Growth Champions scheme, a joint venture between the SCR and the UK India Business Council (UKIBC), aims to support 10 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who want to develop their business links with India, in the hoping of adding £1.3million of exports to the local economy.
Speaking exclusively to TheBusinessDesk.com ahead of the launch David Campbell-Malloy, senior programme manager with trade and investment at Sheffield City Region explained:
“We’ve done a lot of work to get to this point. Our journey started about 18 months ago when we started to look at refreshing our trade and investment plan for the region.
“Currently looking at our goods trade, 55% goes to the EU, 15% to the USA and we’ve seen strong growth with China, however India lags quite far behind. The outlook for investment is also similar.
“As a result we sought to create a programme that would act as a catalyst for both supporting indigenous businesses to start or grow their export activity, but also to help raise the region’s profile for investment.
The new scheme which is open for business applications from today until 14 April will see those successful businesses get £5,000 of business support. This includes the development of an India business plan, company specific market research, competitor analysis and culminates in a trade mission in autumn.
Asked about the impact of Covid-19 on the current plans, David added: “Obviously the current situation has had an impact. We originally planned a launch event, however we made changes to that bit we plan to stick to our timescales.
Sheffield City Region’s ambitions for the Indian market is to increase both the amount and numbers trading with India by more than 50%.
“We see this scheme as a pilot programme, a proof of concept which we hope will further build upon in years to come” Mr Campbell-Malloy added.
Aside from the focus on growing trading relationships through this programme the City Region is also in talks with a number of large Indian businesses about potential investment opportunities following its successful trade mission to Maharashtra in November.
With the ultimate ambition to not only have strong links between businesses in South Yorkshire and India but also eventually for there to be a regional presence in market.
The India Growth Champions scheme is sector agnostic and open to all SMEs in South Yorkshire. However the sectors of advance manufacturing and advanced life sciences have been identified by the region, its universities and UKIBC as being areas of particular synergy with the Indian market.
