20 Indian startups selected under London mayor's business programme

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Recently, 20 Indian startup companies got selected for the Mayor of London's “India Emerging 20” programme. The aim of the programme is to give these startups a platform to expand in London in the form of a discounted office in the city, along with local support and giving access to the local market. This is the third edition of the programme and this time around majority of startups are from Bengaluru, followed by Delhi and other cities including Hyderabad. This year around 328 companies had applied for this programme, out of which 50 were shortlisted and from these 20 were finally selected. The India Emerging 20 programme was launched by the Mayor of London’s official promotional agency, London and Partners, in collaboration with BDO and Lalit Hotels, to identify some of India’s promising startups that wanted to expand internationally. Some of the startups selected this year include Chai Point and Ittisa Digital Media services from Bengaluru, Furtados School of Music from Mumbai and Hug Innovations from Hyderabad, besides others.

The organisers claimed that some of the companies from the earlier programme have immensely benefited from it and have also set up their subsidiaries in the UK. The list includes startups such as EdGE Networks, Indian medical technology company, RX Prism, that opened a £2 million innovation hub in London and Chennai-based analytics firm LatentView and Curadev Pharma had expanded their operations in London after their involvement with the IE20 programme.

“The startup scene in London is very vibrant and there are a lot of university spin outs in the startup space. There are government grants for startups and things are really changing now post Brexit as there was a period of uncertainty immediately after Brexit. London is truly a tech city and the startup scene there is just one of the best in the world. We want to encourage even London-based companies to expand in India and have helped some of them expand in India as well. This year after we had shortlisted 50 companies out of more than 300 applications, our jury made it a point to visit each one of them.” Arbinder Chatwal, Partner and Head of India Advisory Services team at BDO told THE WEEK.

Interestingly, according to the India Meets Britain Tracker 2018, there are approximately 800 Indian companies operating in the UK, with combined revenues of £46.4 billion (£47.5 billion in 2017) and employing 104,932 people. In 2016, imports and exports worth £15.4bn flowed between the two countries. Also according to the tracker, London is UK’s leading investment destination with more than half of all Indian companies investing in the UK (53 per cent) choosing its capital. This is up from 44 per cent in 2017 and 39 per cent in 2016.

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