Raphael John-Lall

T&T’s High Com­mis­sion­er to In­dia, Chan­dra­dath Singh, is call­ing on T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to take ad­van­tage of busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties that In­dia, one of the world’s largest economies, has to of­fer.

He made the point at a we­bi­nar last Thurs­day host­ed by the T&T In­dia Busi­ness Fed­er­a­tion (TTIBF) on do­ing busi­ness in In­dia.

He re­ferred to the vis­its to T&T of In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di and the coun­try’s Min­is­ter of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Dr. Sub­rah­manyam Jais­hankar’s ear­li­er this year as open­ing the door for diplo­mat­ic and busi­ness re­la­tions in the fu­ture.

Singh gave ex­am­ples of key busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor.

“In­vestors from small na­tions can es­tab­lish low-cost B2B sourc­ing hubs in In­dia us­ing state-backed pro­to­cols like open net­work or dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ty com­merce to cu­rate sup­ply chains for their home mar­kets with­out mak­ing cost­ly pro­pri­etary in­vest­ment. In­vestors from emerg­ing na­tions can set up con­tract man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner­ships or joint R&D ven­tures in gen­er­al for­mu­la­tion and di­ag­nos­tic med­ical de­vices,” he said.

He added that for­eign busi­ness in­ter­ests are in­creas­ing­ly shift­ing to In­dia to par­tic­i­pate in the grow­ing econ­o­my and cap­i­talise on the chang­ing lifestyle, es­pe­cial­ly among In­dia’s Gen Z pop­u­la­tion who are heav­i­ly pa­tro­n­is­ing for­eign foods.

“This would be the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­port, from processed foods and pack­aged con­sumer goods to T&T-made snacks, sauces and spices, for the world’s largest young pop­u­la­tion.”

With the emer­gence of West­ern-type cof­fee hous­es in In­dia, Singh said it cre­ates the op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T to ex­port its home­grown co­coa to In­dia.

“Cof­fee hous­es are spring­ing up every­where in In­dia with co­coa drinks in­clud­ed in the menu. This might be the most ap­pro­pri­ate mo­ment for T&T’s Trini­tario co­coa prod­ucts to make a grand en­try in­to In­dia. T&T’s rum and An­gos­tu­ra prod­ucts could al­so share the big­ger mar­ket in In­dia if we have more mar­ket­ing and a planned ap­proach to pro­mo­tion in In­dia.”

He al­so in­formed the au­di­ence that ad­ver­tis­ing is not cheap in In­dia as busi­ness­es must com­pete with large In­di­an and al­so for­eign multi­na­tion­als in get­ting a share of the mar­ket.

“Bear­ing in mind that ad­ver­tis­ing and pro­mo­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ties in In­dia are very ex­pen­sive. You have to com­pete with the medal (suc­cess­ful) com­pa­nies in In­dia who oc­cu­py front pages to pro­mote their prod­ucts, and that’s very ex­pen­sive. So, I hope that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in T&T – and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the Caribbean as a whole – can pool their re­sources in In­dia to pro­mote their prod­ucts to get in­to this mar­ket.”

He al­so ad­vised busi­ness­es to take ad­van­tage of In­dia’s low-cost cap­i­tal re­quire­ments to in­vest in dig­i­tal ser­vices, cus­tomer sup­port, book­keep­ing de­signs, and da­ta ser­vices which are open for part­ner­ship.

“In­dia is way ahead of oth­er coun­tries in the use of AI in all sec­tors of the econ­o­my, in­clud­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive ser­vices and in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. Two In­di­an com­pa­nies are pro­vid­ing AI ser­vices in Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries.

“The doors are there­fore open for col­lab­o­ra­tion with large num­bers of AI ex­perts in In­dia. In ad­vanc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s AI agen­da. Ban­ga­lore alone, for ex­am­ple, the lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy hub in In­dia has 500,000 to 600,000 AI ma­chine learn­ing pro­fes­sion­als.”

He re­mind­ed busi­nes­sown­ers of the re­cent do­na­tion to T&T by the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment of $1 mil­lion in food pro­cess­ing equip­ment which he said is a tes­ta­ment of In­dia’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty in this sec­tor.

“T&T’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty should take ad­van­tage of this and ex­plore joint ven­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­duce agri­cul­tur­al and oth­er equip­ment tai­lored to our spe­cif­ic needs and for ex­port to the rest of the Caribbean and wider re­gion. In­dia’s pro­duc­ing so­lar-pow­ered re­frig­er­a­tion units and long-dis­tance food stor­age should be for items like man­go pulp that re­quire spe­cialised re­frig­er­a­tion.”

While the In­di­an mar­ket can be a boon for lo­cal busi­ness­es, Singh al­so warned the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor about pos­si­ble pit­falls that they may en­counter and ad­vised them to do their re­search and home­work metic­u­lous­ly.

“As far as pay­ments for sup­plies are con­cerned, it is safe to trade through let­ters of cred­it. Make sure you re­ceive the cor­rect vol­ume of goods or­dered and al­so the qual­i­ty. Don’t go on­ly by the sam­ple you re­ceive be­cause the sam­ple you re­ceive might be very dif­fer­ent from the com­mod­i­ty that you get even­tu­al­ly. Be care­ful with that.”

He ad­vised lo­cal busi­ness­es to make sure that a par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny is well es­tab­lished and has prop­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and au­then­tic la­bel­ing and to get to know the es­tab­lished trad­er and con­glom­er­ate or­gan­i­sa­tions like Fed­er­a­tion of In­di­an Ex­port Or­gan­i­sa­tions (FIEO), The Fed­er­a­tion of In­di­an Cham­bers of Com­merce and In­dus­try (FI­ICI) and the Com­pe­ti­tion Com­mis­sion of In­dia (CCI).

“They can be very help­ful in guid­ing you as you go about do­ing busi­ness in In­dia. You can check them out on­line. Ship­ping ar­raign­ments are very im­por­tant. It is bet­ter to deal di­rect­ly with rep­utable ship­ping lines than to lean in­to the sup­pli­er to do so on your be­half.”

Fi­nal­ly, he promised that the T&T High Com­mis­sion to In­dia is there to as­sist lo­cal busi­ness­es who want to build ties with In­dia.

“Al­so re­mem­ber that as High Com­mis­sion­er here, I’m al­so ac­cred­it­ed to Japan, Sin­ga­pore, In­done­sia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lan­ka. These are all eco­nom­ic gi­ants in their own right, where we have tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties for trad­ing. Please let us work to­geth­er and fo­cus al­so in those mar­kets. The mar­ket is open.”

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of The Lit­tle Store and Chatak Foods, Sid­dhi Sankar gave a sum­ma­ry of do­ing busi­ness with In­dia over the last few decades dur­ing the we­bi­nar. Sankar’s fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness has been do­ing busi­ness with In­dia for decades.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, Chatak Food Prod­ucts stands to­day as a sup­pli­er in au­then­tic Trinida­di­an cur­ries and oth­er spice mix­es, hot sauces and gourmet Caribbean condi­ments.

Al­so, they es­tab­lished a fac­to­ry in 1991, which con­tin­ues op­er­a­tions to to­day.

“Our com­pa­ny be­gan do­ing busi­ness some­where around 1965, across three gen­er­a­tions. We would have wit­nessed In­dia’s trans­for­ma­tion from a de­vel­op­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing econ­o­my to one of the world’s largest and fastest grow­ing eco­nom­ic pow­ers,” she said.

Based on this long busi­ness re­la­tion­ship, she said her fam­i­ly has seen In­dia evolve from an un­der­de­vel­oped coun­try to now a glob­al pow­er.

“We have ex­pe­ri­enced first­hand the tran­si­tion from hand­writ­ten pur­chase or­ders sent by post, months-long com­mu­ni­ca­tion by let­ter, the evo­lu­tion to fax, email and video con­fer­enc­ing. To­day’s era of dig­i­tal com­merce and AI-en­abled busi­ness is just the first step in the right di­rec­tion of a very pros­per­ous re­la­tion­ship in com­merce with In­dia.”

She al­so said many of the busi­ness­es that now are es­tab­lished in the Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment Busi­ness Park have been heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by trade with In­dia.

She boast­ed that decades of do­ing busi­ness with In­dia has taught them of the im­por­tance of build­ing re­la­tion­ships.

“If 60 years of do­ing busi­ness with In­dia has taught us any­thing, it is this; re­la­tion­ships out­last trans­ac­tions. A pur­chase or­der cre­ates a sale, and a re­la­tion­ship cre­ates decades of op­por­tu­ni­ty. Price is im­por­tant, but val­ue is greater. The cheap­est sup­pli­er is rarely the best part­ner. You must be able to eval­u­ate your sup­pli­er to see con­sis­ten­cy, qual­i­ty, re­li­a­bil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty. These are the qual­i­ties that cre­ate sus­tain­able busi­ness and re­mem­ber to vis­it the fac­to­ries.”

She en­cour­aged lo­cal busi­ness own­ers who do not know much about In­dia to seek help from the T&T In­dia Busi­ness Fed­er­a­tion.

“For more than 60 years, our com­pa­ny has demon­strat­ed what is pos­si­ble when trust, con­sis­ten­cy and long-term re­la­tion­ships guide in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness. To­day, through or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­dia Busi­ness Fed­er­a­tion, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­tend that ex­pe­ri­ence be­yond one sin­gle com­pa­ny, to build an ecosys­tem where busi­ness­es of every size can con­nect with In­dia, nav­i­gate new op­por­tu­ni­ties with con­fi­dence and con­tribute a stronger, more pros­per­ous eco­nom­ic part­ner­ship be­tween our two na­tions.”