India-Sweden Business Summit 2019
Marked by the state visit of his Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, the IndiaSweden Business Summit, 2019 had stakeholders of both the nations deliberate on matters of mutual interest.
The third state visit of his Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, assumed significance on the back of a bilateral trade volume of USD 3.37 billion recorded in 2018. Having first visited in 1993 followed by the second state visit in 2005, the third state visit between December 02-06’ 2019 came after a gap of nearly 14 years. Accompanied by Queen Silvia of Sweden, his Majesty was joined by an official and a business delegation of 100 people including both large, well-established companies and start-ups, along with representatives of Swedish Government, agencies and universities. Marking the IndiaSweden Business Summit 2019, the agenda was to promote bilateral ties between India and Sweden and follows the first ‘High-Level Innovation Dialogue’ initiated under the aegis of Joint Innovation Partnership Agreement signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Sweden, in April 2018. In this third state visit by his Majesty, stakeholders of both the countries including researchers and business community supported by political leadership deliberated on ways to co-operate in future.
The Summit proved to be
a testimonial of Sweden’s commitment as India’s key partner to increase trade and investment in both the nations. Averred Ylva Berg, President and CEO, Business Sweden, “This delegation is strengthening the foundation of our relation built on more than 20 business delegations in recent years. Sweden and India share values and have an understanding that enables collaboration for innovative solutions when facing challenges of a growing population, pollution and climate change.” The Foreign Minister of Sweden also called on India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr S. Jaishankar to discuss matters of mutual interest.
At the Summit, attention was drawn to the need to develop affordable and scalable technologies to tackle issues pertaining to sustainable growth. Finding common ground on ways to minimise the impact of climate change was agreed upon. At the India-Sweden Business Summit, 2019, the panel sessions drew attention to the driving forces required for sustainable growth of the Indian economy. Manufacturing competitiveness and innovation in the auto sector found a special mention. In the inaugural session, Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance, Government of India cited several deals concluded between India and Sweden. “Both countries are generating employment for their respective citizens and catalysing economic growth,” she mentioned. Said Anders Wickberg, Trade Commissioner to
India, Market Area Director South Asia, “It is a great honour to have so many Swedish enterprises showing extended interest in India and attending our HighLevel Business Delegation. Over 50 companies and institutions have chosen to participate, exemplifying increasing interest in India and positive signals for the future, furthering our bi-lateral relations.” Drawing attention to the need for capacity addition, Tom Johnstone, Chairman, Husqvarna Group rooted for India to invest in upscaling capacity and grab a share of the ongoing global momentum. “The current innovation trend in the auto and other allied sectors needs to be replicated in other domains of the manufacturing sector as well,” he opined. Stated Deepak Bagla, MD & CEO, Invest India, “With 4.5 start-ups commencing operations each day in India, there is no dearth of innovation in the country.” Baba Kalyani, CMD, Bharat Forge Ltd, said, “We had missed the bus on multiple
occasions in the last decade, so we need to accelerate our growth process to make India an exciting place to invest and work.” Michael Johansson, President and CEO, Saab Group, stressed the need to use open-source software for building smart mobility solutions. “Smart integration of hardware and software elements will be key towards technological advancements in the days to come,” he explained.
The first-panel session, ‘The battle of supply chains’, highlighted the potential of India to integrate in an even better manner with the global supply chains. The panel highlighted the need to improve manufacturing competitiveness with agile policy responses, to build a business-friendly environment and develop an efficient logistics ecosystem to be able to attract a higher degree of investment. In the panel discussion, ‘Winning at Innovation’, the Indian delegation was urged to work towards becoming an innovation powerhouse. A study presented at the Summit cited how India had not done justice to its potential as a testbed for disruptive technologies and new business models. The study drew a statistic of India’s spend on R&D. As per the statistic, India spends less than 0.75 per cent of the GDP on R&D activities. In comparison to India, Sweden spends more than three per cent of its GDP. The thirdpanel discussion, ‘Succeeding in India’ benchmarked best practices to succeed in a complex India business environment weighed down by hurdles like infrastructure bottlenecks, different business cultures, and dynamic customer behaviour. The innovation trend in auto and other ancillary industries was lauded by the automotive contingent.
Business Sweden is an organisation jointly owned by the Government of Sweden and representatives from the Swedish business community, through the Swedish Foreign Trade Association with the purpose to help Swedish companies to grow their global sales and international companies from foreign countries like India to invest and expand in Sweden. The entity was formed in January 2013 as the outcome of a merger between the government agency ‘Invest Sweden’ and the organization Swedish Trade Council.