Chennai

Not surprising that fintech, clean energy, urban mobility solutions and a host of new-age enterprises are making a beeline for London.Julie Chappell, MD-International Markets, London & Partners, said opportunities are plenty for many businesses and these included rising sub-sectors such as pharma, CRM and e-commerce. “There is a pent up demand and the future for India and London is positive,” she told DTNext.

 Hemin Bharucha, Chief Representative - India, London & Partners, chipped in to say earlier this year, one such company from Chennai chose London to expand its business there. Be it the unicorns like Oyo or Ola, London & Partners’ focus is to provide a platform to nurture and handhold entrepreneurs and enterprises.

 “India is the second largest investor in the UK and notably 40 per cent of the investments come from south,” Bharucha said, adding mid-sized companies were the main focus, enabling them with all kind of exposure such as access to funding, networking opportunities, identifying potential markets and customers, legal framework and accounting.

 This year, seven new companies have leveraged the support provided by London & Partners. Over 120 projects, including new and existing ones, have generated employment in the UK to 110,000 people, of which 5,500 were highend jobs created last year.

 Chappell said their free programmes provided an opportunity to tap big growth areas and the advantage that Indian business leaders possessed is the quick decisionmaking abilities. “They have good understanding of the potential and their key request is find the customer,” she added.

 The cost of doing business, Chappell said, had been decreasing though London is definitely not the cheapest location. But the cost-to-reward ratio or the pandemicinduced pivot to the virtual world as the new normal, were “interesting” times to do business. Hospitality and transportation may have taken a backseat but lifesciences and payment firms had enough scope to explore, expand and thrive in London, she

 added. Bharucha also said besides finding London to be an ‘open’ city, the availability of talent be in AI or Block-chain or the funding ecosystem, the effort is to link them with 50 different partner organisations.

GROWTH HOTSPOT

• Fintech dominates fundraising in London, accounting for 39% of 2020 investment
• Enterprise software companies raised a fifth of the money invested in first five months
• UK’s thriving VC tech community has raised $5bn in new funds from January-June 2020, almost as much as the $5.4bn raised in 2019 15 funding rounds over $80m in 2020 so far, 12 of which were raised by London-based firms including $500m by Revolut and $360m by Octopus Energy
• London home to over 250 foreign banks; the highest concentration in any financial centre, employing 150,000 people
• UK capital is international investment hotspot and 50% of FDI (2015 and 2019) was in software and IT services, reinforcing its status as a tech powerhouse
• London’s startup ecosystem has produced 38 unicorns (firms valued over $1bn) since 1990, ahead of any other city in Europe 

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