| Okay, so maybe a six-metre high replica of the Taj Mahal floating down the Thames is a tad cliched. But the objective behind the recently-concluded India Now festival, as articulated by Mayor Ken Livingstone, was to engage Londoners with a truly representative slice of modern day India. |
| According to Mark Prescott, cultural advisor to the mayor, the three-month long extravaganza attracted over 1.5 million visitors. Next up, the Trafalgar Square dance festival to mark the occasion of Diwali. "Asian television broadcasters are fighting fiercely over rights," laughs Prescott. |
| 2007 is the year that marks the peak of recent economic and cultural inter-activity between London and India. London Unlimited, the branding arm of London City, with an annual marketing budget of £20 million, is spending five times the average marketing monies to engage with Indian audiences this year. It isn't hard to see why. 2006 saw a record 212,000 tourist arrivals from India. |
| And those tourists spent an average of 14 nights in the city, making them the longest staying. The principal reason, though, is that for the first time, last year, Indian tourists outspent their Japanese counterparts, spending £139 million. |
| "London is terribly serious about India," says James Bidwell, CEO, Visit London, the official visitor organisation. |
| Bidwell and Prescott were in India with Lord Digby Jones, UK minister of state for trade and investment, for a UK-India seminar on partnering in globalisation. Indian business investors are currently the London Stock Exchange's darlings. |
| "There are 20 Indian companies with full listing on the London Stock Exchange, with a combined market capitalisation of just under £2 billion, greater than the NYSE and NASDAQ put together," says Bidwell with discernible pride. |
| There are another 20 Indian companies on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in London as well, taking advantage of a "fairly benign regulatory system". |
| And of course, they want to rival Switzerland and Italy as Bollywood's preferred European shooting location. Bollywood in UK is a $28 million industry annually. |
| Currently 40 movies are filmed in the UK each year, according to Bidwell. But they want the interaction to extend across the value chain of production. |
| "We're looking to make regulations for raising finances and filming as easy as possible, so it outweighs the apprehension that London is more expensive," laughs Prescott. |
| They will also be looking at ways to maximise the tourism opportunities for the 2012 Olympic Games. |
| For London Unlimited, India is today what saturated markets like the US, China, and Japan were in the past. And while Livingstone may not make an appearance year after year (he is scheduled to lead a 100-member strong high-profile delegation to India in the end of November), Bidwell indicates that they intend to sustain investment in India and measure the metrics of returns on that investment. |
| "We have to work hard at retaining our competitive edge. We were completely out of the loop 10 years ago when the Indian market was flooded by overtures from the United States for education or Australia and South East Asia for tourism," says Prescott. |
| It's hard to ignore their repeated references to the city of New York, for long London City's adversary in the most international of global cities stakes. |
| "A sand replica of Taj Mahal has just made its way to New York City as part of the India@60 festival," says Prescott, "and isn't imitation the strongest form of flattery." |
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