N Kumar, Vice Chairman, The Sanmar Group
Chairman, IE Singapore panel in India
International Enterprise Singapore (IE), earlier called “Trade Development Board” (TDB), is akin to India’s commerce ministry. It also used to maintain the key statistics of trade and customs, discussions on bilateral negotiation, rules, laws etc., until the rules and statistics part was taken over by the Government.
IE became purely a trade body like India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). Another body called Economic Development Board (EDB) invests abroad. For example, in India, it has forged investment in the hi-tech parks in Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc.
In 1991-92, Barry Desker, who was the CEO of TDB, came over and requested me to become Singapore’s Honorary Trade Representative in India, because he thought I knew Singapore and Indian industry well. After I accepted, we (TDB) focused on the South, and a great deal of activity was generated. Mr V Subramanian, who was in my office, assisted me. We met various Singapore delegations to India, gave them office space at Indchem and helped them understand India and Indian business.
TDB had similar offices in Delhi and Bombay. By 1996, the activities of TDB in Chennai and the South expanded and we hired full time employees. Subra was deputed to work for TDB fulltime from 1997 and moved to a new office in Besant Nagar.
N Kumar, introducing (l to r) Vaishnav Puri, Hon. Trade Representative - Mumbai, IE Singapore, and Alok Prasad, High Commissioner of India, to Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong (former Prime Minister), Republic of Singapore.
I decided to involve myself only at the government level and in the strategic planning and discussions of TDB and not in the day-to-day activities of the centre, as I was a businessman and there could be a conflict with potential local partners of Singapore businessmen. This planned separation, I believe, contributed to our success. TDB grew and developed over the years and a great deal of investment came from Singapore into the South. When we met former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong recently, he congratulated us on accomplishing this focus. In 2003, the strategy changed, and the Trade Development Board became rechristened as IE, with its focus entirely on investment promotion. There was even more activity, and IE moved to a larger and posh office in Raheja Towers (Standard Motors premises) on Mount Road. The centre is now a high growth office that helps all Singapore companies with what they need to do in South India, among other things, providing them office space and secretarial support.
A new concept takes shape
My association with IE has always been documented with an annual review, and last year I suggested a change in strategy, as I had been involved for more than a decade and become familiar with IE’s plans. They also wanted to appoint another Honorary Trade Representative (HTR) in Bangalore as the work had expanded, but asked me to continue.
I then recommended a panel of advisers instead of appointing individuals, though in every other country, IE have only individuals as HTRs. They liked the idea, and Kathy Lai of IE and I started working on this plan. We developed the concept and chose this panel with leaders from different parts of the country and involved in different activities. The panel has, in software, S Ramadorai of TCS, Mumbai and Ashok Soota from MindTree, Bangalore, in telecom, Sunil Mittal, in financial services, K V Kamath and in bio-tech, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. M S Banga, Tarun Das, Vaishnav Puri and Mukesh Ambani complete this high power panel. Representing IE has given me great exposure and I like the process of institution building it involves. It’s an exercise similar to my stint in CII but involves two countries. In this regard, Kiran made a significant observation to me when she complimented the Singapore Government for using nine experts from India to help their businessmen to understand and invest in India, displaying their entire country’s strategy to all of us, when the Indian polity did not allow even NRIs on our Economic Advisory Panel.
Singapore is run professionally like a company. They function in a clean, planned, transparent manner. They go by the book, adhere to the law, but with the Sanmar experience in corporate governance, I found it easy to deal with them. The first meeting of the panel took place in February 2005. We met Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and the who’s who of Singapore business over the two days. We were treated like royalty.
Coming to the meeting, the topics covered eight different areas of specialisation, like real estate, software, biotech and manufacturing. Singapore companies interested in investing in India were asked about their areas of interest and opportunities identified for them through these topics. It was a very open panel with people to people interactions and very frank views were exchanged.
Some members of the Indian panel felt that with logistics poor in India, it was a tall order to bring in investment in electronics manufacturing. But the panel finally felt that since manufacturing in India is popular and evokes a lot of interest, the Indian panel could guarantee investment in the sector provided the transformation in the logistics infrastructure happens. A suggestion was that EDB and a group like the Tatas could together prepare a white paper on setting up a global manufacturing centre in India. This could be presented to the Government while addressing the problems of bureaucracy, delays, etc.
The Singapore side of the panel was concerned with how to make Singapore more popular and how to attract more investments from India as compared to other centres like Dubai, and Hong Kong. This was another topic of discussion.
Mr Goh Chok Tong and his successor, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, have been very emphatic that India is crucial to Singapore’s plans. Their clear strategy is to have one leg in China and an equally strong one in India. ‘We want to create an Asian powerhouse, which will be a force for the world to reckon with,’ he stresses.
Smaller than Tamil Nadu, Singapore has huge strengths. Its weakness is its relative lack of manpower and this is where we have an advantage. There is great synergy in this area between the two countries. With CECA coming through, the future for Singapore and IE and the InAP bodes well. I believe that the InAP will play a crucial role in the years to come and I am excited at this opportunity to assist the two nations to grow closer together and help each other.