20 January 2008
The Prime Minister has spoken of the "new and deepening relationship" between the UK and India at the conclusion of his two-day visit to the country.
- PM calls for world institutions shake-up
- UK to provide aid package to India
- Prime Minister unveils £9 million Olympics legacy
Read the transcript
Chairman:
Well Hello everyone. Welcome to this India-UK Business Summit. It is a sure way we are going to talk about money. If you have got an idea and you want to make money out of it - watch this show.
It is in a way history being created. We are here at IIT [Indian Institute of Technology]. We have got $100 billion worth of businessmen here, and many hundreds of billions of dollars in the audience - young IT students. Am I right? And Richard Branson is going to tell you how to become an entrepreneur and how to make those billions of dollars. Right?
Well in many ways actually history is being created here today. It is not that businessmen haven’t met politicians before, and politicians haven’t met businessmen, but here we are getting them live on television and who knows, we may get a few deals struck tonight. Are you ready to sign a few documents?
Prime Minister:
There you are.
Chairman:
So as I said, we have about half and half, $50 billion from the UK and $50 billion from India. We don’t count heads here, just in dollars, and the dollar is not that strong, right, so let’s say £50 billion.
I must quote something which not too many people heard Prime Minister Gordon Brown say the last time he was here, which was not that long ago, so it was heard by people close to him.
He was visiting one of the big software centres in Bangalore and he said, you guys from India, if you invented the zero, if you invented the decimal and if you solved Pi 2000 years ago, this must be easy for you. Do you remember saying that?
Prime Minister:
Absolutely.
Chairman:
[INAUDIBLE] a few billion is nothing. And beyond those 2000 years, in the last 60 years we have had a strong vibrant democracy here, so all these kids have democracy in their DNA and that is what makes them creative. Unlike many other countries which don’t have democracy you can’t tell people "work in offices, don’t say anything, but at 5 o’clock let’s all get creative". These guys question everything and that is what actually annoys the older generation like us. But this is the future of India with democracy in their DNA.
Now, the format of the show. We would like to start with some opening remarks, come to questions and answers between the two of you and then take some questions from the floor. So if you have got a tough question keep it ready and put your hand up about half way through the show and I will come to you.
So would you like to make some opening remarks?
Prime Minister:
Can I say what a great pleasure it is for me to be here at the Indian Institute of Technology and to congratulate you all, staff and students, on what are achievements that are known right throughout the world. You are a great institute, you have got great staff and you have got great students and I feel, bringing here some of our British entrepreneurs, a great affinity with the Indian Institute of Technology.
Some of you may know that 40 years ago when I was growing up in Britain, a very close family relative of mine was the Professor of Electrical Engineering here at the Indian Institute of Technology. And I grew up on stories of India, told on the old slide projectors with pictures of what was happening in India. I became very aware of the great struggles and the achievements and the aspirations of this great country of India and I congratulate all of you on what has been achieved over these last 40 - 50 years. And I always had an ambition that I might be able to come, like my uncle, and be a visiting Lecturer here, and perhaps this is the nearest I will get to being able to speak to the students.
And you know the links between our two countries are growing so much more strongly over recent years. There has been a 50% increase in trade between our two countries over only two and a half years. We are signing contracts that mean there are scientific, engineering, technological, environmental cooperation between our two countries. And what we want to do today is show how we can learn from each other and how the entrepreneurial spirit that is here in India and Britain can work together to create prosperity for all our countries.
I want to announce today, and I hope it will be of interest to many of you who may want to start your own businesses, that we are creating a new network where we will provide help and venture capital funds for ideas in India that can be developed in Britain, and ideas in Britain that can be developed in India, and to help a new generation of Indian entrepreneurs set up their own businesses, get access to capital which sometimes is not available, and make a success of what you want to do.
But I know there is one thing that our entrepreneurs, both Indian and British, will say to you, and that is that it is the entrepreneurial spirit that matters, teaching enterprise and commerce in our schools, in our colleges and universities.
There is a great story told about Field Marshal Montgomery, who was one of our Generals. He wasn’t an immodest man. When he was asked who were the three greatest Generals in history, he said the other two were Alexander the Great and Napoleon. And before one of the great battles of the Second World War he asked his troops, "what is the most important thing you have, what is the most important thing that you have got to offer?" And some of them said it was their equipment, and some of them said it was their kit, and some of them said it was their weapons, and he said: "no, the most important thing you have is you". And that is the lesson we learn about entrepreneurship - your skills, your creativity, your ingenuity, your talent. And I believe together working as countries, India and Britain, we can make a huge impact on the world in future, not least the students of this great university.
I wish you well.
Chairman:
Well we also have John Hutton, a Cabinet Minister, and he has a very long portfolio of business and trade roughly.
Mr Hutton:
I think that is probably right, yes.
Chairman:
House of Commons Minister, which we are all very familiar with, the Minister for Science and Technology, very appropriate that you are here at IIT. And Lord Digby Jones, again, business and trade roughly.
Could you say a few words?
Panel Member:
Prime Minister we are delighted and proud that you are here at our institution which we in India have shown and demonstrated to the world as one of our repositories of intellectual and entrepreneurial ability. From these IITs we hear and we see the biggest names in the world today. So we are delighted and proud you are here. The Chairman has just said that the DNA is democracy. I think the DNA in India is entrepreneurship. We have sitting right here that DNA who are demonstrating that DNA, new entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who we had not seen, not heard of ten years ago.
A couple of months ago I was at an award function and when I looked at the awardees, most of them were faces and names which ten years ago one had not heard of. So India, while it is producing so much, we are on a growth trajectory as never before, what we are doing the most is we are producing entrepreneurs. But actually we are the largest producer of entrepreneurship in the world, the largest producer of entrepreneurs in the world.
And Prime Minister this linkage, this announcement of yours which facilitates entrepreneurship, which nurses entrepreneurship, which creates this linkage between entrepreneurship and Angel capital, venture capital, I think needs that catapult to trust again a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Chairman:
A bit of bad news for the IIT students. Just before we came in, Richard Branson said just one thing - you don’t need to study this much to become a billionaire. Well not quite that, but he will explain that later. If I could ask you to say a few words please.
Panel Member:
Prime Minister we are delighted to have you with us. I just wanted to mention [INAUDIBLE] said that if you look at the history of Britain they had great ideas and they can make money out of it. Yes, they had the idea of the Empire and they made a lot of money out of it.
Now the fact is that the Empire has dismantled and the time of the 21st century is to build empires of ideas, and what better placed two countries, England and India, to build that empire of ideas. And that is really a cause for celebration.
I just want to mention one more thing, that it is true that it is entrepreneurship that drives the economy, but it is ideas that drives humanity. And I think you need to match the idea with the entrepreneur, the investment in the idea with the ability to help the entrepreneur to take that idea forward. And I think what we are going to talk about in the 21st century is that linkage, and I think the partnership that you have suggested will provide hopefully that linkage to take both countries forward.
Chairman:
OK, if we could just get to the topic of how can these young men make money. If I can ask you, academia and business, how do we get these young students all over the country in England and in America and in India who have got ideas, how can we get them translated into businesses, into entrepreneurship, into making money?
Panel Member:
Well I must say that we have been able to develop a tremendous amount of entrepreneurship and enterprise in India without a lack of proper framework in India. The students who are sitting out here bubbling with ideas and energy really don’t know where to go today. The UK for example has created a wonderful mechanism through industry academia partnership, the Cambridge cluster, the Oxford cluster, Imperial Innovation Council, all the major centres of educational excellence have combined with industry to create something which is magical. Can we urge the Prime Minister to somehow strengthen the linkage between the UK and India to create a framework where these youngsters can go and tap into to really realise their dreams through their ideas?
Chairman:
Is that part of your idea, what you just announced today, which is a fairly big breakthrough, are you calling it anything?
Prime Minister:
It is the Angel Network, so that young people with ideas who don’t feel they have got access to capital at the moment can get the capital to start their business. Whether it is a business to be started in India or in Britain by Indian entrepreneurs, we are prepared to support it.
And I am very struck by this point. There are people sitting in the audience here today who will have ideas about starting a business. They will need the encouragement and they will need access to capital. But once they have that access to capital then the 100 billion figure you are talking about for this part of the audience is going to be small beer compared with the hundreds of billions that you are going to be able to create as a result of your energy.
Chairman:
Lord Digby Jones, your government is putting money into helping young people as angel investors. Should the government be doing this and how much money are you putting in?
Lord Digby Jones:
Yes, governments actually never make any money. Governments can spend money to create capacity and enable and drive and push and kick and incentivise, definitely. But it is the businesses that make the money. And the Angel Network that the Prime Minister referred to is one more thing you see - in the 21st century in both our countries you are going to cluster wealth creation around knowledge, and around the growth, exploitation and transfer of knowledge. That is where people are going to win. All of the universities here and in Britain linking in with the entrepreneurs, but the use of an Angel Network means that you get private individuals who will risk their money on the idea.
The one thing they do is stay engaged because being an entrepreneur, one thing no-one has mentioned yet is it is quite a lonely existence because you have got an idea and people think you are barking mad and you are trying to push it forward, and to have a very experienced business person who has got some skin in the game, they have got their money there, but the other thing they do is stay with you, they stay engaged and they mentor you quite often. It is a lonely life, which can be better producing something if you have some experience with you. That is why Angel Networks, in this respect, link into universities a bit better.
Platform Speaker:
I just wanted to announce that actually what we are doing is creating a partnership between the British Business Angels Association and the Indian Angels Network. The Indian Angels Network have come up largely to plug what Sunil just said, is really to look at how do you at the very earliest stage help entrepreneurs?
Chairman:
What you are saying is that you have funds, you have this Indian Angel Network, there is the British Angel Network to fund young entrepreneurs with good ideas.
Platform Speaker:
Yes, across both countries.
Chairman:
Now Peter Jones, describe to us first quickly what you do because your TV show doesn’t come to India. It is going to come soon I believe.
Peter Jones:
Hello everybody. My name is Peter Jones. I like to think of myself as an entrepreneur, but more recently in the last couple of years got involved in a little bit of a television show called Dragons Den. I don’t know if any of you have watched that show but it is about entrepreneurs. Or let’s say would-be entrepreneurs, pitching their ideas to a panel of five investors, one of which obviously is the only one that knows what they are doing, but needless to say there are five of us.
Chairman:
So how do you tell a good idea from a bad idea?
Peter Jones:
I think for me there are two or three component parts, and that is that I think that clearly preparation is something that is absolutely vital. I think you would be amazed at the number of ideas that come out where people are clearly not prepared. So presentation and preparation is fundamental. And to get to preparation it is about research, so researching your idea, looking and understanding your idea, studying the markets and the competition. But more importantly as well, as importantly as that, it is actually about what you want to do with your product and are you going to be the person running that business. Because I do have an issue when people pitch ideas, the idea could be good but the individual is pretty bad. But that doesn’t mean that that idea shouldn’t come to life, and I have found, I even had discussions earlier today when we were in the briefing session, just looking at ways of trying to establish: is that person investable - potentially not - but the idea is. And I would like to see and think that we can harness those ideas and still invest in those properties.
Chairman:
I do know somebody who was in EMI when the Beatles walked in with their record when they were unknown and he told them to get the hell out of there. One year later they were worth billions. So you can also make huge mistakes.
What happens in the university situation? Would somebody like to take this up? Do universities tend to hold on to their intellectual property and their rights, are they reluctant to give it away, is that a bit of tension?
Panel Member:
I think that universities try to add value. Not just in the UK but also in India I think we have a great deal to gain, the two university systems cooperating with businesses in both countries and trying to create something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But on your question, we need to nurture our entrepreneurs and our inventors. I don’t think universities are trying just to hold on to them, we are trying to ensure that we have the resources to keep developing people with those innovative ideas.
Chairman:
Yes, you have a right, you have nurtured these students, they have come up with a great idea, they have used your labs. Do you feel that you have a right on that intellectual property and do students feel no that is my idea, I need the whole thing? So what’s the trade-off?
Panel Member:
Well there should be something to gain on both sides. We shouldn’t be holding on to the intellectual property, we should be making it possible for our students and our faculty members to spin those ideas out into the economy as quickly as possible and with as few obstacles as possible.
Chairman:
… in India, do universities allow students to have the right to intellectual property?
Panel Member:
I think you have just hit the trigger. There is a disconnect between universities and entrepreneurship, but what is good news is that a Bill has been placed in parliament which will allow ownership of the Professor or the student, at least 30%. The university also will make money.
Chairman:
The university owns 70%?
Panel Member:
Yes, the university will. For example the University of Colombia made $145 million last year on a similar kind of an act. So the university will make money to put back into knowledge and the entrepreneur will make money.
Chairman:
Just a second, the Bill says 70% university, 30% student?
Panel Member:
Well the Indian Bill is still in the detail process but it is similar to the …
Chairman:
Is that fair - 70% university, 30% entrepreneur?
Audience:
No.
Chairman:
What should it be?
Panel Member:
It is not 70% university, 30% university. 30% direct entrepreneur and 30% goes into a special purpose vehicle.
Chairman:
Oh no, don’t tell me 30% goes to the government.
Panel Member:
No, nothing to the government. And I think you must remember that there are 33 million entrepreneurs in India and this can become 100 million entrepreneurs in terms of this connect if it is established, provided there is an institutional mechanism. Unfortunately that …
Chairman:
So even in India students and professors are going to get their rights. And we have a young student who is now an entrepreneur, a former student. Do you have the rights to your idea?
Amanda Jones:
Hello. Yes, my name is Amanda Jones and I am from a company called Red Button Designs, and we do all of our IT.
Chairman:
How did you get there? Was it a fight?
Amanda Jones:
It was a fight in many ways. Both my colleagues are actually still students. I graduated a year and a half ago and we were very fortunate in that around our university there are some brilliant infrastructures for encouraging enterprise, encouraging young people with ideas to find the educational route to go ahead and actually implement them. And we were lucky enough to receive funding to protect our IT. But the threat was there from the university and as a young start-up without much business acumen it is very difficult to defend that if there isn’t a network allowing you to do so.
Chairman:
Prime Minister Brown can I ask you of this controversy about whether universities, or will your Angel Fund hold on to the intellectual property or will you allow it to transfer to the students or the ideas generation?
Prime Minister:
Well we have been changing the rules over recent years and actually Richard Lambert is here and he did what is called the Lambert Report on universities and made a series of recommendations that enable universities to get greater benefit from what they do and those people who are the inventors to get more of the return from what they do. And of course we need to encourage more universities. Not all universities are as entrepreneurial as some of the universities that we have heard about, and right across the world more universities could be more entrepreneurial. I think this whole question of the future of our economy is that the ideas, and the creativity, and the ingenuity that comes from students and staff at universities will be an ever more powerful lever in the new inventions and in the dynamism of our economies in the years to come.
You know I was a University Lecturer before I became a politician and went on that downward spiral. As you know universities are said to stand for objectivity and rationality and the disinterest in pursuit of truth. You know these are all the qualities you have got to leave behind when you go into politics.
But in future, and perhaps Richard might say something about this, we see universities right at the heart of the entrepreneurial revolution in our country. Yes it is true that there are many people who are successful entrepreneurs who have not been at university, but most successful entrepreneurs will wish to use the ideas and the creativity that come from people who have studied and learned and developed their own ideas at university. So don’t forget that as students of this institute you hold the power to create large numbers of businesses in the years to come.
Richard Lambert:
The great news is that there has been a big culture change in British universities over the last 5 - 10 years, they are much more playing a part in the broader community, they are reaching out, not always successfully but they are really, really trying. And the critical thing is networks, you want informal, formal networks, you want people coming on the campus and chewing the fat, addressing problems they didn’t even know they had and getting answers to it. These networks are what drives change and ideas.
Chairman:
OK, so we are getting to the point where universities are now becoming less possessive about intellectual property, willing to hand over sometimes 100% if you bargain hard, but sometimes 30%, so it is a bit of bargaining you have to do with your university. Don’t take it lying down that they keep all the property. Right?
Let’s move on now to what actually, for these youngsters here, what makes an entrepreneur? Richard Branson now, what makes an entrepreneur and how do you become a billionaire or a millionaire?
Sir Richard Branson:
Just touching on the other subject, I hadn’t realised that universities took maybe 30% of a student’s ideas if they came up with them at a university. I think it is very dangerous. I think if somebody is at a university and they come up with an idea, you know they are paying for their education and that intellectual copyright should be theirs and the university should be a teaching institution, not a business.
Chairman:
You are saying the right thing here at IIC.
Sir Richard Branson:
What makes a good entrepreneur? It is somebody who is willing just to take a risk. One of the problems about going to university is that aged 22 - 23 you are already becoming quite conservative and you have got to make sure you don’t become conservative. You may have a mortgage, you may have a partner.
Chairman:
So at 22 you are pretty old, is that what you are saying?
Sir Richard Branson:
You are getting into a stage where you have had your education and therefore you can go and get a good job, you can get a good salaried job, so you know before you go to university you have got nothing to lose, you can just go and start your business and you are not tied down. So the important thing is if you do go to university you use that education you have got, but be as bold and brave when you leave university as you would have been prior to being at university.
Chairman:
So risk-taking is a key factor?
Sir Richard Brandson:
Yes you are going to have to take bold risks and you are going to have to make sure that you get great people around you. It helps if you are a fantastic motivator of people. And as somebody said earlier, you know there are two different people, there are entrepreneurs who are entrepreneurially minded, they are not necessarily great at running businesses, so they may be very good at setting up businesses. So you know, make sure you are good at delegating, find someone who is really good maybe to run the business and then you can be a proper entrepreneur.
Chairman:
So even if you have got a great idea, you are willing to take risks but you still may not be a good manager. Is that what you are saying? Do you have to hire a management team?
Sir Richard Branson:
Yes, I think a good entrepreneur is someone who finds the time to find people who effectively put them out of business so they can go on and be an entrepreneur on the next venture quite quickly.
Richard Lambert:
I can’t let Richard get away with saying that universities are not businesses. That is not on, because whether you are an Indian university or a British one, you have got American universities and Chinese Universities, French, German universities, Japanese universities every day competing in a global pool of talent to say come to me. And I absolutely agree with Richard that the primary function is to allow this knowledge to develop and let them keep it. I am with you.
Sir Richard Branson:
If the university had taken 30% of Virgin I would absolutely resent it today, I can assure you.
Richard Lambert:
But if the universities don’t have a business ethic in the way they go about attracting that talent in the first place they will fail in the 21st century. If we are talking profits, I agree with you, if we are talking drive I don’t.
John Hood (Oxford University):
May I correct the 30% point. I think Richard is one of the great entrepreneurs of the world and our university wants to nurture every possible Richard Branson we can. The IP rules which India is in the throes of enacting, and which mirror in large part an age old Act in the United States, and rules we work under in the UK, are there for the IP that comes from publicly funded research. So where the public has invested you need clear IP rules and IP sharing arrangements between the institution and the academics and the students who may have been funded for that work. But on the other hand, if clever students in our institutions, be they in our business schools, our science faculties or anywhere else, come up with brilliant ideas, they have Angel networks, they have all sorts of other mechanisms around the university as a result of the generous third stream funding that we have had to invest to create this, whereby they can take those ideas and make what they want to of them, and we encourage that, and we nurture that and they get the benefit.
Panel Member:
Since we are having a go at Richard, I am going to have another go, and I am really going to stick my neck out on this one. It strikes me that Richard Branson says you know you have got to be bold when you are young and take the risk, because otherwise it is easy to go into a salaried job, and I kind of feel it is the other way round because I can think of nothing worse than you know lying on my death bed having been in a salaried job all my life. So really if you do the obvious thing you are going to be an entrepreneur, because if it all fails you know you can go and get a salaried job later anyhow, but you may as well try once, or twice, or three times, or five times. And we all know why it is the Model … Ford, right?
Chairman:
OK, now we know roughly what it needs to be an entrepreneur - don’t study too much, go out and do something, and if you can’t, take a salaried job. If you can, be an entrepreneur, if you can’t, be a salaried person. That is pretty tough on a whole lot of people, but still.
Mr John Hutton, let’s move on to what are you looking for in India, or what are entrepreneurs and what is the government looking for in India?
Mr Hutton:
Well we run a unique programme called The Global Entrepreneurs Programme which is designed to try and attract the best entrepreneurs to come and locate businesses in the UK and then with access to the European Union market. And the Global Entrepreneurs Programme is doing I think a fantastic job in helping cement this unique and special relationship that we have with India. And I think the way that we can take this relationship to a new level will be in this area of entrepreneurship. So we are willing and ready, and we are investing to support that kind of exchange of ideas and business opportunities between India and …
Chairman:
But what specifically about India?
Mr Hutton:
Well look at the people in this room, look at the expertise here in IIT, you know a world class institute of education but a centre of tremendous enterprise as well.
Chairman:
So if somebody here has an idea, just to be practical, they can come to this new office and put the idea to them and get money now?
Mr Hutton:
Of course, and the idea is to match the capital with the enterprise and the ideas of some of India’s brightest students.
Chairman:
… what are we looking for with England, because we have had these historic ties, things are changing now, it is much more equal and there is a lot of entrepreneurship here. What are you looking for out of England?
Panel Member:
Well I think it is already happening. If you see the number of mergers and acquisitions, at the smaller level, we are hearing the big names, you know you hear of Corus, you hear of all the big names, but if you look at the small outward investment of India which is looking at the new synergies, the technology and innovation in the UK, and the skill, the knowledge and the skills in India, this is a partnership, this is a tremendous partnership. And I think this programme nurtures that partnership. That is already happening in a very small way. We must just make it … a bit more, and we are going to see so much of this because very naturally between India and the UK there is a partnership, not only at a political level but at a social level, at so many levels, as you all know. And I think that what has already started, you see a small retailer at the roadside, at the street corner or the neighbourhood retailer all across England, and we are seeing so much of this happening which is just going to multiply. It is really going to multiply. And then if we talk about entrepreneurship, if we are 1% of 1billion people turning into entrepreneurs, and the UK has 1%, well 1% of 1 billion …
Panel Member:
We are talking about the institutional mechanism, we also talk about … come to me with an idea. There is, how much is the UK government willing to share in a forthcoming event where there is a fantastic synergy? We will be having the Commonwealth Games where lots of people here who are so young I hope are very interested, you have the Olympics, we are having the Games in 2010, you have the Olympics in 2012, you also had the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. How can we tap into what was learnt, how can we arrive at a synergy in innovation in all aspects of the Games, bed and breakfast, to communicating the message, to security, to all kinds of things that happen with the Games?
Prime Minister:
Well this is a great opportunity. India is the world’s biggest democracy. We think of ourselves in Britain as the world’s oldest democracy. This new partnership of equals can yield huge advantages for both our countries in the times to come. And it is not just that we will have the Commonwealth Games in 2014, you in 2010, and the Olympics are in the middle, and we have got these programmes under way for cooperation between athletes and young sportsmen and women so that they can learn together, and I hope they will be extended in future years. Also 20,000 people come from India to study in our universities and colleges, 20,000 in total already, and that number can expand. Universities can link up more closely between Britain and India in the years to come. A quarter of a million Indians come to Britain every year to see Britain, and large numbers of people want to come to India, and these contacts - cultural, educational and scientific and of course business - should be grown in the years to come. And I am here partly to make sure that we know that each of us can benefit from extending these contacts.
So many of you who have never visited Britain, you are very welcome to come and do so, and many, some of you will come and study in our universities as well.
Panel Member:
Prime Minister you said you are the oldest democracy and we are the largest democracy. What you did not say is that we are the rowdiest democracy. But when we talk of the Games, as … said, Prime Minister you are coming from China and our Prime Minister was there in China last week, and when we looked at what China was doing for the Olympic Games, they said that 30% is what is what you have already dismantled, 30% is just going to be scrapped, or maybe a bit more than 30%. And I said that why don’t you, what you are going to dismantle, why don’t we use it for the Commonwealth Games? But I thought that that is an idea which somebody needs to pick up, and then they could be used for your Games you see.
Chairman:
If we could move on to another issue. There was some worry, and I will come to that later, there is a worry that ‘Oh God, keep the government out of this. We don’t want hurdles’. Are you trying to say that you are a new kind of government, you are going to help people?
Prime Minister:
We are on your side, yes. I think the new kind of government that almost every country is having to consider now is that our duty is to empower and enable people, it is not government telling people what to do, and it is not government creating barriers to what people can do, it is government sometimes removing themselves from the scene so that people can make the best of their own potential. And I think when you talk about innovation and creativity, we have got to increase the science budget, you know we have got to invest in science for the future. So it is a government commitment that we invest more. We have doubled the science budget and the technology and innovation budgets will increase, but the purpose of that is to enable people to be able to show their talents to best effect, and the purpose of course of greater investment in education, and India - to your great benefit - you are investing I think 60% more in education in the next few years. That is to enable people to make the most of their talent.
And I see the role of politics as essentially to bridge the gap, to help bridge the gap between what we are and what we have it in ourselves to become. And every student and every lecturer knows that the talent and potential that exists in India here, that can be developed for the future, can eliminate poverty in the world, can get rid of some of the terrible diseases that we have, can take action against climate change and the environment, the potential for people to make these innovative changes is enormous, and that is why I think one of the roles of government is to empower and enable people to do so.
Chairman:
What about the Indian government? Is it going to change, is it actually going to be a positive force for entrepreneurship?
Panel Member:
… science and technology, I can tell you that whereas the tenth plan layout was 25,000 …, and the eleventh plan is going to be three times that size, and that tells you the kind of commitment that the government has. But as the Prime Minister said, the real challenge is really how to ensure that the government doesn’t regulate innovation. What the government needs to do is to back it with investment and then allow the entrepreneur to get the support of the government and then allow Angel investors to do a public-private partnership and then move forward from the …[inaudible] to the market, and that it is what we need to do and if we are able to manage that we will be successful.
And one of the things that Ahmed mentioned is that we are trying to, and nothing is going to go to the government, when somebody creates an idea and that ultimately is licensed, not less than 30% of that will go to those who created the idea, but none of it will go to the government. And it is not less than 30%, every university can have its own way of actually dealing with it, they can give 60% if they want.
And then the other thing that we are doing, and really the real idea comes when it is incubated, you have an idea, you need to have it incubated.
Chairman:
But one of the problems which is generating in India, and maybe in England as well, is perception, if the government is in this they are going to have to fill in forms, there is going to be corruption. How many people here does it worry you a bit that the government is involved a little bit in entrepreneurship and Angel investing? So that is about 20%. How many people are not worried and welcoming the government? About 10%.
Panel Member:
You wanted a different answer, didn’t you?
Chairman:
No I have no views at all.
Panel Member:
I am Karan Bilimoria I came up with my idea for Cobra beer while I was at university in England, and I want to disagree with something that Richard Branson supposedly said, and that is I tell you I wouldn’t have given up my education for anything, and all of you are so lucky and so fortunate to be at one of the best educational institutions in the world. Don’t give it up for anything.
And I just wanted to say that government can do a lot to help business. I am all for government being out of the way and letting business getting on with it, but three years ago when the Prime Minister was Chancellor he launched the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship, which I have been proud to be National Champion, to encourage students to just think of entrepreneurship as a career choice, and it has worked absolutely brilliantly.
And just picking up on a point that Digby Jones said earlier on, the big problem is raising money, and this is why the UK-India Business Angel network is going to help. I remember, nobody believes in you. My father was a General in India at the time and I finished all my studies, I decided to go into business and he said: "What are you doing? All this education and you are becoming an import-export wallah. Get a proper job." And I did - I became an entrepreneur.
Chairman:
If we can go round and you can tell us some stories, actual stories of how you raised money. Because I think, as you said, people just don’t believe you, your parents don’t believe you, and certainly financial Angels give you a rough time. So how did you raise money? Would anybody like to tell us your story?
Panel Member:
Well actually on exactly that point of raising money, when we set up the UK-India Business Angel network under what John Hutton just mentioned, the Global Entrepreneur Programme, which is led by …[inaudible].. and I am the …[inaudible]… maker for India looking for these technology companies here.
Chairman:
So you give money? Contact him!
Panel Member:
I am the guy because I sit and I look at the IIT business plans, not just in Delhi but actually all around India.
Chairman:
Can you flash your mobile number …
Panel Member:
I have my cards, I will leave them at the front of the desk. And the reason I mention this is because this is the initiative which the British government has launched - without the government actually being actively taking money out of you. It is not charging you taxes for any of this, what it is actually doing is, as the Prime Minister mentioned, it is facilitating, it is reducing the cost of you trying to find the money because individuals such as I, we go around looking for the best business plans and our … over here, through the Science Office, will look for the best technology in India and then match it with the money in the private sector, private sector money in the UK, and find the management talent. And the reason that works is because … get the money to the people.
Chairman:
Right, but you are the giver, how about guys who try to raise money at different times?
Panel Member:
My name is Hari Bartia, I am from IIT Delhi, my alma mater. So thank you for the great education which the Indian government provided. I paid $10 a semester at that time.
Chairman:
It probably still is $10 isn’t it? OK, 20 …
Panel Member:
I just want to highlight two issues about innovation. One is we talk about small innovations. I think in India we have, because of scarcity of resources, we have small innovations happening in daily life, by farmers, workers, students, at every level. I think you are talking about breakthrough innovations which we can use to create huge values. And I think that is where, we talk about government’s role, but one of the important things that the government can do is to continue to grant money for basic research, because basic research is where ideas get generated. And I think …[inaudible]… has done a great change where from loaning money they started to increase grants to the students and to the professors who create ideas. Now that is where the factory of ideas is.
Chairman:
So that is a good thing?
Panel Member:
Absolutely.
Chairman:
Is that a great shame as well? Or is it a good thing?
Panel Member:
It is a very good thing because you don’t need to invest, you need to grant money to do basic research. Now when basic research happens, students, or venture capitalists, or networks which carried forward and create commercial organisations and products and create wealth.
Chairman:
So there is no such thing as a free grant - right?
Panel Member:
No, the grant has to be free because your basic research always has to be supported by the government. You talk about raising money, but today I can tell you if you have a good idea there is enough money chasing. What you need is a network. I think this kind of network is …
Chairman:
You were at university and you got your money, did people say this was ridiculous, your idea will never work? How did you convince people?
Panel Member:
Well my name is Mark Buckingham from a company called Reactec and I …[inaudible]… out from Edinburgh University in Scotland. So I have actually been fortunate enough to get a significant amount of support through grants coming from the government, but initially from a business plan competition in which we came second - and I am not bitter about that - which got us into the social network and then I could approach business angels. We have raised to date now somewhere in the region of …
Chairman:
Were you on a television programme?
Panel Member:
I have been on a previous one.
Chairman:
No, I mean to get your money did you appear on something like that?
Panel Member:
No, I was before Dragons Den actually started, so I actually did this through the Scottish Institute for Enterprise. But I have raised two angel investment rounds which have totalled somewhere in the region of £800,000. But on top of that I have been supported by the government through both Spur and Smart Awards in the region of a quarter of a million pounds to enable us to develop the core technology which we are now releasing in two major sectors, that of renewable and safety devices.
Chairman:
I just want to come back to the Prime Minister. There are a lot of individual examples here, personal successes, but you do need an overriding vision. And as Britain goes into the next century, the next hundred years, you have the G8 functioning, which was like of the last century. Do you look towards it becoming the G10 with other countries coming in?
Prime Minister:
Yes. And the world is going to change very fast and there is no future for big economic events which meet with just 5, 6 or 8 powers and doesn’t include India, which is growing so fast, and include all those new and emerging economies of the future. But if you look at what all of our economies are going to have to do in the future, we will live by our skills and our inventiveness and our creativity, and every economy now will be looking for the potential it has in the ingenuity of individual people for new enterprises, new ideas, new commercial opportunities, new innovations and new science. And that is why the role of government is to encourage science and education, finance it so that people have the platform from which to build, remove the barriers of regulation wherever possible, and empower people to make the most of these opportunities.
Chairman:
Just to clarify what you said at the beginning. You yourself personally would like to see India as part of the G8, make it a G8, or maybe with China a G10?
Prime Minister:
I would like to see India as a member of the UN Security Council, and I will say that tomorrow in a speech that I will make. I want the G8 Plus 5 to meet regularly, and that includes the prominent role that India should have in the discussion of world economic affairs, and I want us to recognise that globalisation means that a new world has come into existence and I look forward to extending this partnership of equals over the next decade so that India and Britain can work together to reform the international institutions and make for a stronger global economy.
Chairman:
Here are some final rounding up comments. Richard Branson, you must have a lot of comments, you deserve a response.
Sir Richard Branson:
We have got politicians here and I just can’t lose this opportunity to ask one question: if you can’t trade in a country because of rules set down by politicians - protectionist rules - obviously you can’t do business and the consumer doesn’t benefit because it doesn’t have extra competition, it took us 15 years of hard lobbying to get Virgin Atlantic to be able to fly to India.
Chairman:
15 years?
Sir Richard Branson:
15 years.
Chairman:
That is like overnight here.
Prime Minister:
And you know what they say in Britain, the first 500 years of any institution’s history is always the most difficult.
Sir Richard Branson:
But why do politicians still allow a situation where British companies cannot trade in India, and Indian companies cannot trade in Britain? What we would beg of politicians to do is to agree here and now to get rid of all those rules, to the benefit of the consumer.
Prime Minister:
… and it is time for all of us to work together for a world trade agreement that opens up industries and services throughout the world. And the greatest beneficiaries will be the poorest people in the poorest countries if we can do this. And I hate the idea that we cannot get this trade deal and we will slip back into protectionism. We need a world trade deal. India’s needs will be met in this trade deal, the needs of Europe and America and Latin America can be met, but we need to move forward over the next few weeks, because it is urgent, to send a message that we don’t want protectionism, we don’t want people to shut the doors on other countries, we don’t want to shut the door on trade that can liberate people between countries, so let’s work together. A world trade deal is in the interests of Britain and India, and particularly of the poorest people of the world.
Chairman:
But can I just ask you, when we say get rid of protectionism on goods and services, now I know that this has not been such a major issue in England, in Britain, about out-sourcing, do we extend that to out-sourcing, if something can be done cheaper in India and people lose jobs in the west, should there be protectionism against that?
Prime Minister:
I think we all benefit from the opening up of trade. And what will happen is that there will be jobs moved between India and Britain in one respect, and moved in another direction. If you take what is happening at the moment, there is a huge amount of investment by Indian companies in Britain, and people say to me: Oh Corus has been taken over by Mr Tata, are you against it? No, I am in favour of it because that is the way that the world economy is going to move in the future. There will be Indian companies investing in Britain, and British companies investing in India. And if we have outsourcing and off-shoring, that is part of the new economy. But we have always got to be looking for the new opportunities. In Britain we are investing in India with new Aerospace opportunities, new pharmaceutical opportunities, there is a great deal of new enterprise in India as a result of things that we are doing in Britain and we want to extend that in future years.
So it is mutual trade to the mutual benefit of all. And any country that closes the door on trade in the future will lose, and the citizens of the country will lose. We need a far more open free trade system and I hope that every government in the world can come to see that as the right way forward.
Chairman:
Richard Branson’s question wasn’t only about England, it was about India. Are you willing to open up finally?
Sir Richard Branson:
Can I set up a domestic airline in India?
Chairman:
Sorry?
Sir Richard Branson:
I just wonder if I can set up a domestic airline in India?
Chairman:
I told you a deal could be done tonight. Just sign it.
Panel Member:
Well at the onset I must say that the UK has been at the forefront of supporting outsourcing. When we had this great noise all over the world in the western countries about outsourcing, the UK was one country that came forward and said that if the economics worked, well let’s do all the outsourcing that we can, it is good for business.Now when we talk of an open economy, yes in India we started opening our economy 15 years ago, while China was celebrating … of their commitment of their reform.
But while I completely agree with the Prime Minister that we need to close this trade round of the WTO, we have to ensure that the structural flows in global trade are addressed. And most of all when we talk of free trade we must also be talking about fair trade. If the Indian farmer has to compete, not with the US farmer but with the US government …
Chairman:
Who are subsidising their farmers.
Panel Member:
They are subsidised, they are subsidised …
Prime Minister:
Well America has got to cut its subsidies, and Europe have got to cut their subsidies, and if we can achieve that then I think it is possible to have some trade deals.
Panel Member:
That is right.
Chairman:
Now let’s open it up to the audience. I hope you have been thinking about your questions.
Question:
Good Evening. Lucien Tenovski. I am an entrepreneur from the UK, also from Edinburgh actually. I do have my IP. But I am here, actually I have been here for the last three weeks starting Brave New India. And what I have found, I have been meeting a lot of students from universities all across India, and meeting a lot of companies, and what I am finding is that the companies are saying we need two things - we need quantity and quality and talent.
Question:
Yes, there is a huge job surplus. And the struggle they are finding is that reach out to get into the rural areas to actually fill that talent. Besides the entrepreneurs, what can we do as entrepreneurs to help those people that aren’t going to … and start their businesses, to actually get the jobs that they want?
Chairman:
Well let me just pass that on to the man who has run Witpro for many years. The shortage of talent, is that an issue?
Panel Member:
Well I think that if you think about the training programmes in India, I think that you continue to have a really robust supply of talent. And if you think about the need in western economies in terms of being able to create virtual companies really fast, I think that creates a very nice indication of …[inaudible]… I think that it does require reformatting the work flows that you have here, a much better ability to be able to move the work around. But certainly, if anything, this is a solution that is ready and is at hand.
Chairman:
How many people would you employ every year at Witpro?
Panel Member:
Well you know my information is dated, but I would say that you know we used to hire about 40,000 people a year, which was huge.
Chairman:
40,000 a year, and I believe you get about a million applications for those 40,000.
Panel Member:
That is correct. So if you think about just anything that relates to the number of people and the talent available in this country, it is really difficult to match that anywhere.
Question:
Hi everybody. I am Ravel Seti, and I am an IT entrepreneur. My question is regarding the Angel network. Every information that we see is primarily you know circulated in the capital region of NTR, the metro cities. The university is connected with … with the regional networks, are also in the NCR region or the metro cities.
Chairman:
So only in the capital cities? Is that true?
Question:
That is right, they have got to be connected with the smaller cities as well.
Chairman:
Are you on the web? Lord Digby Jones, is this on the web, the internet, are you available?
Lord Digby Jones:
Well there are two aspects to it. One is that if you are going to succeed, and both of your questions are exactly the same in terms of where you are going to reach to, and we need to use business as the one agent that can get into smaller communities and they can see living proof of why they should be skilled up, why they should get themselves a skill and why should they engage in risk - which is what entrepreneurship is. And they will come to you, if you are engaged with them, they can do it on the web, you can do it on the internet, but India - especially India - but Britain as well, it is about communities and if you can combine wealth creation and social inclusion together, then really everybody feels they are going forward. And I do think - and this is something which is very important about … you know I take my hat off to Richard Branson, he is a guy who people will always think of as an entrepreneur, I want that. And then to get that brand and the name, and in your communities you are tomorrow him basically, and what you have got to do is to get into your communities yourselves and show why it matters. You can use the web, of course you can, but the most important thing is the person, getting people to believe in skill and risk. Do that in local rural communities in India and you will find you get a reservoir of talent which the universities and the businesses will then.
Panel Member:
I just want to add, that the Indian Asian Network is on the web, it is not only in Delhi, it is in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, and entrepreneurs are smart enough to know how to find us, not only from most cities of India but we get business plans from the US, from Israel, and actually even from Cambridge University last month.
Chairman:
Are you going to criticise Richard Branson?
Panel Member:
No, I am in support of what he says, we need to open up more. But I think there is a fine example sitting right between ourselves. Suni is here. Vodaphone picked up one of India’s largest mobile players of over $18 billion, and he was in this country in about a month’s time. So India’s trade and investment has liberalised, has moved and I would say there are only four or five areas which … around the world - banking, insurance, aviation. My view is we will get them.
Chairman:
… actually you have got Vodaphone England experience. What was your experience like, what was it like coming into India? It didn’t take you 15 years and what has it been like since?
Panel Member:
Well first of all, Hello everybody. Actually our experience has been very good. We acquired a company, as my colleague has highlighted, and we got our approvals in three months. They were a very long three months.
Chairman:
Not bad.
Panel Member:
Yes, not bad but they were trying because we had to approach the regulatory situation and the legal situation quite carefully, but we have been here now for 9 months, we have 14 million customers here, we grew our customer base by 1.5 million customers a month, and we will have 100 million customers by the year 2010. So India is on a roll, we are very happy to be rolling with India.
Chairman:
And what lessons would you give to others from your experience of coming into India? Would you say everybody should do it, or watch out, be careful?
Panel Member:
I would say every business has to think about India, not only from a customer and demand perspective, but also from a reverse … perspective. We can all learn a lot from India. In India necessity is the mother of invention. Things happen in India in a way that are quite different from how they happen around the world.
Chairman:
Can you elaborate on that or is it difficult to say?
Panel Member:
No actually not really. For example we have …[inaudible]… sites all around the world, we put air conditioning in …[inaudible]…sites. We have been told by our vendors that these …[inaudible]…need to be air conditioned. Here in India they don’t need …[inaudible]…and they work just fine. So we are making the world greener, we are more carbon neutral as a result of it, and there are dozens and dozens of examples from India that can go overseas. Equally there are many things that we can bring from overseas to India, including capital and innovation and all of the things that have been talked about here today.
So my view is persevere, keep finding a way to get into India.
Chairman:
But you have to persevere.
Panel Member:
You do have to persevere and you do have to have …[inaudible]…But you also have to lean forward and it is worth it.
Chairman:
Great. Thank you very much.
Question:
This time last year our Prime Minister, then Chancellor, recognised that opportunity and committed £1 million to set up what was then the Indo-British Partnership Network, and today we are the UK India Business Council, here and represented, and the UK’s commitment to doing business in India. We are also delighted to be facilitating and enabling the Angel network and working with our colleagues. But our government, and I must stand up for government, and it is not often I do this, but government intervention, and in his capacity as Chancellor, at the Prime Minister’s initiative in setting up Science Enterprise Centres, the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship, Enterprise Week in the UK - that has made a significant difference to entrepreneurship. And the two companies here that are represented started out at university without a thought of being an entrepreneur, and without that infrastructure that government had set up, not interfering with business but certainly enabling the infrastructure with networks, access to finance, access to mentors and expertise, we would not have the calibre of high growth young companies and tremendous entrepreneurs that we have today.
As the UK-India Business Council we are sending students out to work in Indian companies so that we can share and learn from each other, and these networks and partnerships are critical. And thank you Prime Minister for your support.
Chairman:
There is a gentleman next to you who looks a little bit sceptical. Richard Branson - the last word.
Sir Richard Branson:
No, I wasn’t … I was actually just thinking, I was thinking about what you said earlier on. I have never actually said anything against education, it was a fact that I left school at 15, I have certainly not suggested to other people that they should follow the same path because it is highly risky. Most businesses fail, and actually having a good university education you know (a) can help you become a good entrepreneur, and (b) it is a very, very good insurance policy if you do fail. So at least you can get a steady job afterwards.
Panel Member:
Can I make an appeal to all of you, which is that the problems politicians have when they are saying we must liberalise and we must get the growth of which we are all taking, is Thank God they work in democracies. But because they work in democracies they are susceptible to vested interests, they are susceptible to people in society, and organisations in society, from all different aspects, who are actually putting pressure on politicians in America, in France, in India and Britain, who are saying no, no, no, we don’t want any of this. And they have to, they really do, the leaders of our countries have to be susceptible to that. That is what democracy is. But the problem is it is very easy in an organisation like tonight to say this is what we have got to do, we have got to use the mobile telephone network, we have got to use the airlines, we must use the universities and really drive it forward. But you are the people who can put the pressure on the vested interests who are blocking this because they will be susceptible to you. And that is the only way to make a mark.
Chairman:
If I could just ask you, if a businessman says I prefer to do business with autocratic … What do you say to that?
Panel Member:
What they say is we don’t want competition. Well personally I am a passionate believer in free trade and I would stop agricultural subsidies in America and France tomorrow morning.
Chairman:
No, I am saying they would prefer to deal with countries that …
Panel Member:
In fact I wouldn’t wait until tomorrow morning as far as I am concerned.
Chairman:
No, businessmen want to deal with countries that don’t have democracies, that do not have the patience for democratic … What do you say to them?
Panel Member:
To them I would say business is one of the great ways of exposing non-democracies to the pressures of the 21st century. And if you actually cut people off completely, you end up with Burma. If what you do is use business as a way of engaging with countries, in a sensible fashion taking advice from government ..
Chairman:
So you would do business with Burma?
Panel Member:
I would do business with countries where you would sincerely hope that the free trade and liberalised mentality - of which India should be rightly proud, and Britain - is a way of getting countries to open up. I actually believe that China is more open today because it has got the Beijing Olympics.
Chairman:
I think your words were democracies are frustrating, you have got to persevere, but it is worth it. Is that right?
Panel Member:
That is what I, yes I think …
Chairman:
I think we are just running out of time. We will have one last round of comments, but I do want to ask Richard Branson one thing, did you when somebody asked you how to become a millionaire, you said first become a billionaire and then buy an airline. Is that true?
Sir Richard Branson:
Yes I did say that. Fortunately in our case people like the airline and it didn’t turn out to be true. But when we started the airline, people thought what on earth is somebody from the record business doing going into the airline business, but I think if you can create a really quality business you can prove the sceptics wrong, and anyway that is what we try to do.
Chairman:
OK, so could we just ask you for closing comments on what you have heard today and this remarkable announcement you have made today about this Angel Network you are setting up?
Prime Minister:
I was about to say to the person in the audience who asked about the Business Angel Network, just give us your name and address at the end and we will be in touch, because we want to extend this network right across the country and we want those people who don’t see opportunities to raise finance at the moment, to get them.
But what I was thinking as I was listening to this discussion is the discussion about enterprise, and business, and commerce should start not in universities and colleges first, but should start first of all in our schools. And I think if I had been at school and we had had businessmen or women coming into our school and talking about enterprise, we would have had more people taking up the opportunities for business.
I think the second thing is that people must be prepared to take risks, and one of the things I have always been worried about is the fear of failure, and in Britain and perhaps India we penalise people who fail too much. We have got to say to people take the risk and we will support you in what you are trying to do.
And I think the third thing that I have learned about this is to believe in the future. There are school mottos in our country - and many of you as students remember the mottos of your school - and the ones that say that anything is possible, and you can achieve a huge amount and you can reach the stars - these are the sort of mottos. And anybody who is starting in business has got to believe that the possibilities and the opportunities are there and can be used. And I hope you will all feel that there are opportunities now opening up, not just in India, but in Britain as well and in other countries, for you to use your business talents.
And I think the final thing I would say is what Arun Sarun, who has done a great job in Vodaphone, said, and I am very pleased you are here today, you have just given me an idea about deregulation in Britain, having told us what is happening in India. But I think the important thing that he is saying is this: you cannot be a global company now, or you cannot be a country interested in the global economy unless you play a role investing, and joining in conversations with, and having a dialogue, and opening up agreements with India. You have a pride of place in the international economy because of the dynamism and creativity you have shown in recent years, and we want to continue to work with you at the highest level, to the benefit of both India’s future and the future of Britain. But I believe it will contribute to more prosperity, peace and a sustainable environment across the world.
Let’s work together in the future.
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