The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and The Consulate General of the Russian Federation jointly organized a “Business Dialogue - Indo-Russia Opportunities and Scope” on 1st June 2016 from 2.30 p.m. onwards (IST) in Gorky Sadan - Russian Cultural Centre for Kolkata, 3 Gorky Terrace, Kolkata 17. The programme was streamed live between Kolkata and Russia.

The Chamber felt that it is a most opportune time to explore opportunities of Indo-Russian Business in the East and this video conference was the first dialogue between Russian and businesses from West Bengal in many years.

From the Indian side, representing West Bengal, the conference was attended by Mr. Ambarish Dasgupta, President, The Bengal Chamber; Mr. Hemant Kanoria, Chairman & MD, Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd; Dr. Rupali Basu, CEO, Apollo Gleneagles Hospital Ltd; Mr. S Radhakrishnan, Past President, Bengal Chamber; Mr. Deb A Mukherjee, Chairman Energy and Environment Committee, The Bengal Chamber & MD, Enfragy Solutions India Pvt. Ltd; Mr. Subhodip Ghosh, Director General Designate, The Bengal Chamber, along with a few more industry representatives. There were a total of 25 participants and around 25 representatives from the media, from the Indian side. The Russian side was represented by Mr. Konstantin Petrokov, President Advisor of OPORA, Ms. Veronica Peshkova, Executive Member of OPORA Russia, Ms. Elena Antonova, Ministry of Economy, Russian Federation, Asia Advisor, Mr. Vasily Petrechenko, Deputy Head of Moscow State University’s Technopark and few more industry leaders. The entire session was moderated by Mr. Mikhail Gosev, the Acting Consul General of The Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Kolkata.

Mr. Ambarish Dasgupta spoke about the strategic importance of trade between the two countries and how the Government of India has emphasized to enhance the bilateral trade between Russia and India. Bengal being strategically located as a gateway to South East Asia and being rich in minerals, water and power has the true potential of bringing business and developing bilateral trade between the two countries. Mr Dasgupta also highlighted the fact that State Government has key focus in MSMEs and the State possesses huge intellectual capital for IT and ITeS. Therefore, there is a huge scope of Analytics. Skills, Education and Healthcare are other sectors wherein business opportunities are also quite bright. Mr. Hemant Kanoria, the Keynote Speaker, spoke about how two countries have been good partners for decades. He also reiterated the opportunities for MSMEs in engineering goods. He spoke about agriculture and agro based industries, consumer goods, tea, jute and other relevant sectors.

The Russian representatives discussed about various products from the Russian side focusing on analytics, biotechnology applications, wound dressing, molecular biotechnology products which are less expensive and have huge customer and distributer support system. The conference acted as a precursor to the Chamber’s upcoming business delegation to Russia later this year.