Korea sees emerging opportunities in India

New Delhi/Gurgaon (INDIA). With its vision of increasing the Indian trade volume with Korea multiple numbers of times, the Korean government has called upon its business and trade community to see emerging opportunities in India aggressively in India.

Korea has already started working on making an ecosystem for the MSMEs in India.

According to Shin Bong-kil, the Ambassador of Korea to India, who was addressing an audience comprising of small, medium, micro-entrepreneurs and startup promoters during the “Korean Self Employed & MSME in India 2019” workshop organized jointly in Gurgaon by Korean Association in India and Korean Embassy in India on June 7, Modi’s national development strategy rests on the East Asian growth model, which is largely Korea and Singapore.

The Ambassador was referring to the article “The idea of Modi” published on a weekend special recently in India.

“Ever since he (Modi) was Gujarat chief, he was very much impressed by the Korean economy model. Now his core idea of thinking is that we should follow the Korean model as Korea is the manufacturing industry, and Korean investment is speedy and aggressive. Korean companies are very aggressive in investing in India and so is Modi very aggressive. He gets inspiration from Koreans. We should utilize this kind of momentum and India is growing very fast and we should be speedy and aggressive in making investments here,” said the Ambassador Shin Bong-kil.

Organized with the idea of encouraging Korean MSME entrepreneurs and individuals to set up and expand their businesses in India, the workshop witnessed overwhelming participation from across India.

According to Euy Don Park, the Chairman of the Korean Association in India, the number of participants was 150 and they included the entrepreneurs who were already doing business in India for 10-20 years, and they shared their good and bad experiences.

“The number of Korean SMEs doing business in India is increasing but we want more to come to India. However, many Korean companies in India are successful but others are facing hardship and need our assistance and we want to make them successful. Korean embassy and Korean Association some months back sat together and thought of ways as to how we can help them. In any way, we have to make them successful, therefore we conceptualized this kind of workshop,” said Park.

He added that without their successful entry into India, the India-Korea community will be successful.

In the first session of the workshop, the participants were from government and business associations as well as the president of FISME. In the second session, the entrepreneurs shared their experiences good or bad from industry and they represented from diverse fields.

“Indian trade volume with Korea is just 2 percent of the total overseas trade volume of Korean, while with China it is more 25%, while the Korean-ASEAN trade volume is more than 10 %.  We envision to take Indian trade volume with Korea to 10 percent. Therefore, we have to make SMEs successful as without them we cannot reach the figure of 10% or achieve higher targets,” Park added.

The workshop room was packed with present and potential entrepreneurs from all over India, and they included most experience people from Pune and Bangalore too. Also was invited a Startup companies ‘Balance Hero’ that targets to want to be Unicorn in 2-3 years and it recently got an investment of Rs. 300 crore.  The promoters of the GUNG chain of Korean food restaurants too shared his success stories with the audience.

Sung Chang, Hong, Director, Korean Association in India said that before starting a business with India, the Koreans needed to understand Indian culture and society too, and it was very important. They should look at India as an emerging market, and should not be limited to Korean clients only.

“The first step can be looking for Korean clients but they should look at the Indian market also as it’s a huge emerging market with diverse types of needs.

“Gung is a fine example of how its promoters expanded the chain of restaurants with his innovative ideas and did away with the dependence on the availability of chefs,” Hong added. Hong also happens to be the managing director of NongHyup Bank in India.

Animesh Saxena, the president of FISME that represents over 400 small, medium and micro enterprises associations in India said that at the time when global economy fears a slowdown because of the US-China trade war, Europe’s BREXIT issue and ongoing Iran crises in Gulf, the two nations India and South Korea can march together and deepen economic and strategic cooperation.

“Two countries are remarkable complementary to each other. India is the world’s fastest-growing economy and South Korea has the right kind of technology and services to offer. In 2017, our bilateral trade was US$ 20 billion with investment showing an upward trend. Both sides have pledged to increase the trade by 50 billion by 2030,” said Saxena.

“It is in our national interest to promote South Koran SMEs and help them set up joint ventures with Indian SMEs. We are duty-bound to offer all kinds of assistance that are needed to make such formation in success, and we are happy to guide Korean SMEs to find the right partners and consultants and also brief them with the actual ground situation so that they can make informed decisions. We will introduce them with the social network so that they don’t feel out of place,” Saxena assured the audience.

The event witnessed the participation of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), Korea Internationa Trade Association (KITA), Korean Chamber of Commerce & Industry in India (KOCHAM), Korean Business Startup Facilitation Centre and Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises (FISME).