IBA opens its new business season in Russia
Top Russian and Indian business executives as well as leading politicians from both countries, including the Indian Ambassador to Russia H.E. Mr. Prabhat Shukla, members of the Russian government as wells as senators and State Duma legislators gathered together recently at the Batchug Kempinski Hotel in downtown Moscow to mark the opening of The Indian Business Alliance (IBA) Business Season in Russia and also celebrated the 13th anniversary of the IBA foundation as an influential professional business organization for the protection and promotion of Indian companies and their interests in the country. The events title sponsor was Choron, a major diamond corporation, whose CEO, Rajesh Gandhi, was also in attendance. Other sponsors included major Indian corporations in Russia, such as The Imperial Tailoring Co., RusIndTravel, Angelika Fashion, Coral Med, etc.
All the VIP guests and key guest speakers, including Valery Fadeyev, editor 
of the Expert magazine, who also doubles as the board chairman of the Business Council for Cooperation with India, Federation Council Senator Alexander Pochinok, RSPP First Executive Vice President Alexander Murychyev, Gregory Troussov, president of Kontakt Expert Consulting Co., and several other highly influential Russian and Indian business executives, highlighted in their speeches the new opportunities opening up in the Russian and Indian business ties.
Thus, opening the colorful forum, Sammy Kotwani — the founder and CEO of the Imperial Tailoring Co., who also doubles as the IBA president — noted the productivity in the robust relationships between India and Russia and the vital role the business communities in both countries can play to boost these relationships to a higher level. “Today, the IBA’s major role is to strengthen the business ties between the two business communities and provide them with vital contacts and relevant information about doing business in each country.”
From his side, the Indian ambassador highlighted the importance of deepening the level of cooperation far beyond the current political platform, where the cooperation between the countries is at its historical best, to 
embrace more of economic activities, where the volume of bilateral trade, investments and service turnovers are currently far below the huge and untapped potentials of the two fast-growing economies. The ambassador specifically assured the Russian and Indian business executives of the Indian Embassy’s readiness to help promote bilateral trade, economic activities, more efficient flows of investments, skills and other expertise into IT, biotechnologies and other sectors of the two countries’ economies. “The main question for me and for the leaders of our countries is how to add new economic aspects to our attitudes, how to develop business attitudes between our countries?” he noted. “We hope that IBA and the intergovernmental organization, which will start functioning in October, will give the necessary impulse to new development attitudes and cooperation.”
The obviousness of the mutual benefits inherent in the deepening of cooperation between the two countries was also reiterated by other speakers. Thus, Tavinder Vasudeva, president of Micro Labs Ltd’s operations in Europe, Russia and Africa, took the audience through a comprehensive review of the Russian and Indian economies.
Specifically, he highlighted the similarities and sectors with huge potential synergies in the two economies and the importance of harnessing the multiplication effects from deepening the current level of cooperation between the nations — named in the Goldman Sachs’ BRIC acronym of four emerging markets — that will lead the global economy in the second half of this century. Citing the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s World Investment Report-2008, Vasudeva noted that India has retained its position as the second most-preferred global destination for foreign investments in 2008, lagging only behind China, and will continue to do so, at least, till 2010. “This is why now is the right time for Indians to step up their business activities in Russia and Russian partners in India.”
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