TRADE
in ancient Gaelic and Sanskrit. With over 17,000 people living here, the Indian community is the largest Asian community in Ireland. Investments between Ireland and India have
been quietly increasing over the years, with over 30 Indian companies having set up in Ireland creating more than 3,000 jobs, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL Technologies. Conversely, although India ranks low in
global terms of ease with which to do business, it is home to 1.27 billion people and affords Irish businesses huge opportunities, with Glanbia, CRH, PM Group and Kerry Group among over 70 Irish companies who have invested there, creating around 6,000 jobs.
CUTTING THE RED TAPE Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have been working to bring about reforms which will help to create stable, long- term economic growth for the Indian economy. Part of this has been to attempt to reduce the amount of red tape required to set up and run a business in India.
Demonetisation of all 500 and 1,000 rupee
notes, and the introduction of a national goods and services tax (GST)–a unifying sales tax across all the Indian states–brought about initially disappointing results, but slowly the groundwork for economic reform has started to pay off and yield results. Until as recently as the 1990s, India’s economy
was closed and government-directed. Even now 70 per cent of the banking sector is state-owned. It is also still deeply agrarian with 67 per cent of the population (and 70 per cent of the workforce) living rurally. However, that is changing, as it possesses one of the largest, youngest and cheapest workforces in the world, and boasts a growth rate which has surpassed even China, now hovering around 7.1 per cent. Earlier this year Anil Rai Gupta, chairman and managing director at Indian electricity giant Havells, told CNBC he predicts India could achieve double digit gross domestic product (GDP) growth: “To achieve GDP growth of 10 per cent, India would need the service sector to grow close to 20 per cent complemented by 4 and 8 per cent growth in agriculture and industrial growth,” he said, adding that India’s
economic fundamentals were strong enough to achieve that. Project activity on the ground, led by
government investment is gaining in traction with ambitious plans for physical and digital infrastructure development, public housing and smart cities. The Smart Cities Mission, run by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is an urban renewal and retrofitting program to develop 100 cities across the country impacting urban populations of 99,486,840 people.
TECH INDUSTRY India’s IT industry has boomed over the last 30 years, initially driven by India’s attractiveness as a low-cost location for outsourcing. However over that time, its indigenous tech industry has developed, and one of the landmark Indian investments in Ireland was HCL Technologies announcing it would set up a new software business in Dublin in 2011. HCL is one of the biggest brand names in the Indian IT sector and it was seen as a catalyst for further projects from Indian multinational companies to establish operations in Ireland.
30 INNOVATION IRELAN REVIEW
Photo: Samuel Wong
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