Background:

With the highest predicted GDP growth of any major nation in 2023, India’s status as a global superpower is rising exponentially. In 2022 the country overtook the UK as the world’s fifth-largest economy. In 2023 its population overtook China’s.

Since the dawn of the 21st century, global political and business leaders such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have identified this as “India’s Century”, just as Great Britain dominated the 19th century and the United States the 20th.

Where do the greatest opportunities lie for investment, trade, start-up businesses or employment? How can other countries and companies harness this tremendous uplift in economic fortune – especially those with substantial Indian populations – along with the millions of people drawn by the magnetic power of this ancient civilization?

In this lecture Dinesh will answer these and other questions, enabling readers to understand and capitalise on the biggest shift in global power since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Speaker:

Dinesh Dhamija is a British Indian entrepreneur, author, politician and philanthropist who made his name as the founder of online travel agency ebookers and is now at the forefront of negotiations on a UK India trade deal. A first-generation immigrant from India who moved to the UK in the 1960s, he has since lived and worked in 17 countries and donated more than £5 million to charity. As founder of ebookers, Dinesh created the first internet travel company in the UK and Europe, which achieved FTSE 250 status on the London Stock Exchange. After an initial investment of $5 million, Dinesh sold the business for $471 million in 2005, since when he has devoted his time to politics, charity work, and a new business in green energy. From 2019 to 2020, Dinesh represented London for the Liberal Democrats at the European Parliament and served as President of the India Desk for the European Union. He left the European Parliament as a result of Brexit and is now an active advocate for a trade deal between the UK and India that could create hundreds of thousands of jobs in both countries.  As founder and chairman of Copper Beech, Dinesh also manages investments in sustainable projects in Europe and India, including creating the biggest solar and hydrogen energy companies in Romania. In his charity work, Dinesh is the founder of two India-based NGOs: Shiksha and Chikitsa. He is also a supporter and trustee of several charities including the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, Scope and the LEPRA Society. Born in Australia as the son of an Indian diplomat, Dinesh grew up in India, Mauritius, Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands before attending Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he attained an MA in Law. His autobiography, Book It!, tells the story of his journey to earning a £100 million fortune. His second book, The Indian Century, looks forward to the trade opportunities India represents for the UK.