What are we talking about?

At the beginning of October 2019, the Indian Embassy in Rome launched a strategic program to promote economic relations between India and Italy for the duration of twelve months: the Access India Initiative (AII).

The program, which falls within the broader national program Make in India, launched by the Government several years ago, aims to give a significant acceleration to business and economic-commercial development between Italy and India, especially in consideration of an important aspect: India needs technology, know-how and skills, but an approach towards this market can be complex for an industrial fabric like the Italian one, made up of 99% micro-SMEs.

The current international scenarios open up great business opportunities for businesses: India, the world's second most populous and fifth largest economy, is one of the largest global economies, the one that grows faster (average growth rate of 7%) and the reforms implemented in recent years have contributed to making the country increasingly business friendly and open to international companies and investors. Considering that growth will continue to travel at the same pace for the coming years and that its weight in the world is destined to increase, India can be defined as the market of the future.

For the realization of the AII program, the Embassy has selected Octagona as a Knowledge Partner to whom to entrust the implementation and operational management of the project, in coordination with the Embassy itself.

Octagona is a consulting company that has been dealing with business internationalization for almost twenty years and has a deep knowledge of the Indian market and its dynamics thanks to a presence in the country with 3 direct offices (New Delhi, Bangalore and Pune) and 8 partner offices (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Ludhiana, Chandighar, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Dewas), and the management of more than 300 projects to support the entry or establishment of Italian companies in India.

Objectives
The AII program intends to support Italian companies to better understand the characteristics of the Indian market and to provide them with an innovative platform that can assist them in their first access steps. The initiative, conceived in a long-term perspective, is aimed at attracting on-site investments and is aimed both at companies that want to open production facilities, and at SMEs that are already involved in import-export operations with India but are thinking in a broader time horizon.

AII has the following objectives:

a) helping Italian companies interested in India to understand the opportunities present;

b) support companies in the path of market access;

c) provide companies with all the tools needed to evaluate a productive or commercial investment in India;

d) creating a platform of structured relations between Italy and India able to facilitate the focus and the realization of projects for the opening of the Indian market to Italian companies

To whom it is addressed

The companies that will be involved in the project will be divided into 2 Groups (around 50 SMEs):

Group 1: SMEs that want to open production facilities. This group will have full access to the program.

Group 2: SMEs already engaged in import-export operations with India. Only those companies with a long-term strategic vision and aiming to create on-site facilities will have access to the program. The evaluation will be carried out on a case by case basis.