New Zealand does clever things. And India does scale. So when the University of Canterbury decided to launch its Global India Reach initiative (UCGIR), what better tagline than “where clever meets scale”. Arguing this was Sandeep Sharma, who works at the University’s International Office and is the chairperson of UCGIR.
And the occasion was the launch of the initiative on March 29, attended by Indian students at the University led by their Vice-Chancellor, Rod Carr, Christchurch City Councillor Raf Manji, Community Board member Shirish Paranjape, and President of Christchurch Multicultural Council Surinder Tandon.
“This strategic insight [clever meets scale] is a credit to our VC. Taking this forward, our focus at UCGIR will be on encouraging students who have interest in business, commerce, trade and enterprises to come together and interact with businesses around the globe. Over time, we aim to be the bridge between New Zealand’s knowledge and India’s scale of business operations,” Mr Sharma said.
Emphasising that such an initiative is timely and much needed, Mr Manji added, “Considering that we have pretty much ignored India till now as compared to our trade with China – for reasons nobody knows – and which is very surprising as the world’s largest democracy has huge competitive advantages over China, I hope UCGIR helps in getting Kiwis to Indians and vice-versa.”
Later on, participating in a panel discussion, Mr Tandon and Mr Paranjape shared their experiences over the past 20 years of connecting Indian and Kiwi businesses in the textile and electronics sector respectively.
Some good suggestions that came out at the occasion were providing on-site placement facilities at the University of Canterbury (UC) for international students, as well as UC ensuring that students get summer jobs/internships in their related professional courses. “It will good if the UC administration can help with these,” Mr Tandon said.
Mr Carr had the final word: “We are already working with the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce to help the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in and around Canterbury make provisions for student internships. To take students on board is easy for bigger companies, of which there aren’t many here. And SMEs will need some support to make it happen. The dialogue on this has already started and you will see some action soon.”