Every year come 9th January, when the winter chills set in and migratory birds come flocking in India’s sanctuaries from far away lands such as Siberia, Europe and the Pacific, an altogether different movement starts becoming perceptible on the horizon as the Indian Diaspora comes swooping in varied plumages and numbers for a quaint annual ritual called the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
Started initially as a channel by the Indian Government to make an estimated 25 million non resident Indians (NRIs) living in 130 countries feel welcomed and special in their country of origin, the PBD has gathered essential PR moss as the years have rolled by. Steadily growing in both attendance and impact, it has made space for both cultural extravaganza and festivities, as well as, exploring the Diaspora’s role in India’s quest for globalisation, possibilities for deepening engagement with India, and its expectation of their mother country.
What started as a sentimental, tug-at-the-heartstrings affair has steadily matured over the years into a platform for talking and doing business with India, a channel for dialogue and communication. Many topics and questions figure in its three-day programme agenda: what are the challenges faced by Overseas Indians while trying to reconnect with their Indian roots? What are the challenges faced by them in interacting with India? How can India resolve them? What fields in cultural, educational, economic and other spheres of India are of interest to Overseas Indians?
Yet, it is business at the end of the day that clearly explains the staggering attendance of every chief minister in India worth his electorate, seen making business presentations to a hawk eyed Diaspora audience, a lot that has almost mastered the art of restrained patience while asking for some more. A typical session teems with great speeches and glossy brochures extolling the many advantages and benefits of investments, with bureaucrats and politicians jostling with speakerphones and fancy looking PPTs, and visitors responding with seasoned excitement. Some ready to invest, others scouting for partnerships, and many waiting for the government to woo them a bit harder still.
An investing-in-India platform that connects the Diaspora to Indian businesses
Amongst the three-day extravaganza that took place this year amidst a high profile gathering of ministers, heads of Indian states, and the Prime Minister and the President herself, plenary sessions and Maya Ravan dance drama, what went almost unnoticed (on a relative scale and especially by the media) was the launch of a business networking platform for Overseas Indians looking to invest in India.
At last, many would say!
What assumes special significance is that it is the first of its kind online platform that the government has put its name to with the intention of inviting its Diaspora to invest and do business with India. The access is direct, through real time chats with facilitators and an expert network of knowledge consultants in areas as diverse as setting up a business in India, procedural requirements to market entry strategies, tax and legal advisory services, to opportunity analysis and actual business launch.
The key idea is to create an online business network that will bring together Overseas Indians, entrepreneurs and Indian businesses on one common platform to do business with each other. This network is expected to connect investors and entrepreneurs to a cross-section of innovative businesses, products and services, and involves a careful process of qualification and verification, to ensure that only the most credible and trusted partners reach you.
For the first time, the government is clearly going all out to reach the Overseas Indians, to address their concerns and to invite them to partner in India’s growth story. It wants to answer questions, it wants to hand hold through tedious process; it wants to demystify the denseness that surrounds its many policies and procedures.
It wants to make it easy for people to do business with India.
With countries such as Germany, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, Finland and Sweden, leading the way as investment friendly destinations, India certainly is still a babe in the woods. www.oifc.in is a fledging platform that needs to grow in numbers to gain critical mass to be able to wedge any impact at the core of Diaspora issues, and objectives. Yet, it is a start nevertheless. On the very first day of its launch, by the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh itself, it drew an instant response, with numerous registrations and live chats and queries posts.
Live Help! & an Online Consultants Marketplace
Perhaps what is a real draw with the platform is an immediate connect and access to a real facilitation system. From not getting any access or any answers to fetching an instant response comes as a pleasant surprise, for anybody who has spent time coping with the impermeable mute government walls. Even old festering resigned frustration can be discarded when a question asked is a question answered. www.oifc.in offers interaction with experts and facilitators; it showcases the numerous investment centric projects at state levels and individual investment avenues and products through strategic partners. The mood in the Indian government has clearly changed; it means business and talks business.
It was only meant to be a website
It always helps to remember that what stands today as an admirable, progressive framework for investment facilitation, wasn’t always so. As per a standard brief, the requirement was for a website, and perhaps a nice looking site at that. With elegant pages, pleasing colours and content, but end of the day, only a site.
So, where did this formidable, sophisticated, investment facilitation-knowledge-process-automation kind of platform DNA emerge from?
It would be tempting to claim a flash of brilliant insight or closed door brainstorming meetings, but the reality is almost ordinary, commonsense thinking. With a little help of imagination and considerable freedom from the client, we went about putting small things together that make the big picture possible. A good place to start was by examining what the government shared to be persistent ‘last mile problems’ faced by investors. So, we went about joining the dots, working our way towards one comprehensive framework that eased key pain areas for investors. Apart from connecting OIFC’s knowledge partners with the investor group through a more instant touchpoint facilitation centre, our solution was building a good knowledge process so that every query finds itself into our databases and our facilitation becomes better and better. Soon, we were adding last mile connects at every level of facilitation from one-to-one chats to platform bases marketplaces.
That’s a bit of history about making of the blueprint. Time to go back and execute it.