Sanjiv Mehta, the president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), stressed: “Indian business sees new opportunities available for it in Russia.”
According to him, sectors of Russian industry such as diamond processing, food, oil, and coal should attract the attention of Indian companies, which can contribute to the further development of these industries. Sanjiv Mehta emphasized that India is actively investing in the Russian Far East.
In his turn, Alexey Repik, chairman of the All-Russia Business Association Delovaya Rossiya (Business Russia), said that he was always ready, in cooperation with Indian venture funds, to invest in genuinely interesting projects in the sphere of basic necessities and consumer goods production, as well as in tourism.
Crystal Alliance Shipping shareholder Andrey Velikorodny presented a new route connecting India and Russia that enables the delivery of cargo containers from India to Vladivostok in 17 days. Moreover, this route provides for the transshipment of cargo and its subsequent delivery to Moscow and further west along the Trans-Siberian Railway. By the end of 2022, Velikorodny expects to launch a weekly route from Russia to India and back.
However, many problems arose on the way to implementing the project. After the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, Russia lost most of its foreign containers. The country had to buy containers en masse from China and ship them to India to make shipping to Russia possible.
There is also a shortage of transport ships, caused by the fact that it is difficult to lease foreign ships, and there is no possibility to make large investments in shipbuilding.
Speaking about the difficulties in ensuring the availability of transport vehicles, Andrey Velikorodnyi said: “The volume of Russian exports is very large, and it would be great if at least half of this volume was transported by Russian companies and Russian ships.”
Sergei Cheremin, head of the Department of Foreign Economic and International Relations and chairman of the Board of the Business Council for Cooperation with India, noted that the scale of cooperation with India in Moscow is very significant, especially the contribution of Indian engineers to the development of systems to combat the coronavirus. Cheremin further said that much effort is being made to develop inter-regional exchanges and that Moscow and Delhi have decided to conclude a three-year cooperation agreement.
Russia's largest bank Sberbank has a branch in Delhi and will soon open a branch in Mumbai as well. There are calls from the business world to speed up the creation of a system that will provide simple and reliable payment mechanisms in rubles and rupees.
Indian surgeon Somasundaram Subramanian, founder and CEO of the Eurasian Federation of Oncology and chairman of Board of Directors of the Eurasian Cancer Research Council, is involved in cancer treatment while also being actively involved in providing scholarships for students who come from India to study in Russia.
Thousands of Indian students are studying in medical schools throughout Russia. However, when they get their degree, they leave the country. Russian students do the same when they go to the West. The Indian surgeon believes that this system must be fundamentally changed. Somasundaram Subramanian also called on Aeroflot, whose planes now fly three direct flights a week between Russia and India, to increase the number of flights and connect regional cities.
Somasundaram Subramanian, who has lived in Russia for 32 years and has many contacts in the business world, when asked what changes, in his view, have taken place in relations between Russia and India in the last six months, replied, “You can count on your old friend even in trouble.”
“In the last six months there has been an ‘acceleration’ in all areas of India-Russia bilateral ties, and there is no stopping it now. In my opinion, this is very good. And this rapprochement can be explained by the deep historical ties between the two countries. India views Russia as a reliable partner and an old friend. And you can count on your old friend even in trouble.”