'Bengaluru now global No.3 in German visas'

Bengaluru is No.3 among all German missions abroad in terms of issuing long-term visas to Germany, Andrea Christ, Deputy Consul General, German Consulate General in Bengaluru, has said.

She was delivering an address on Thursday at the event, ‘25 Years — Reunification: Business Opportunities for Indian Companies in Eastern Germany’, organised by German Trade and Invest in association with the German Consulate General and the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce. The event was intended to highlight the opportunities available in Germany, especially Eastern Germany, for Indian businesses.

Ms Christ said she had arrived in the city 18 months ago, hoping for lots of sunshine and free time to read a pile of books after a hectic assignment in Washington, DC. But she said Bengaluru, where “simply too much is going on”, has kept her busy so much that she never found the time to read those books.

“I found a very interesting posting, and honestly, I don’t even miss reading those books,” the Deputy Consul General said. Ms Christ said she found it initially difficult to believe that a consulate could achieve the global No.3 status in issuing long-term visas. “This speaks volumes about the extent of long-term exchange between India and Germany, especially Bengaluru and Germany,” she said.

Ms Christ said when the Consulate General recently took an audit of German visitors to Bengaluru, they were pleasantly surprised to see the extent of visits by German politicians.

“If you plan to go to Germany to do business or set up a representative office, you have a very good chance that the local German politician, no matter wherever, would know about Bengaluru, know about India, and know about the business potential of Indian and German co-operation,” she said.

German ‘Yes’, not Indian ‘yes’
Hanuman Sharma, CFO of Dynamatic Technologies, a BSE-, NSE-listed Rs 1,625-cr company which operates in the defence and hydraulic space, shared his experiences of owning a subsidiary in Eastern Germany with revenues of €100 million-plus where more than 400 Germans work.

According to Sharma, dealing with Germans is sheer pleasure due to their professionalism and understanding. “On both sides of the table, when you deal with German companies, there is a method in the way they do business, logic to what they do, and reliability in what they say. A German ‘yes’ is not an Indian ‘yes’ in that when they say yes, it means yes,” he said.

But Sharma was honest enough to make an observation about a German drawback which he had observed. “They do not want to take risks since they are very safety conscious.” In his view, India and Germany can be provided as a combined solution provider to the global market. He cited the example of Dynamatics’ new plant in Chennai, which combined German marketing and engineering with Indian backend to scale up to €20 million in a mere three years.

Ganesh Srinivasan, Delivery Head, L&T Infotech; Peter Alltschekow, Managing Director, Eastern Germany, Germany Trade and Invest; Asha-Maria Sharma, Director, Service Industries, Germany Trade and Invest; and André Günther, Head of Business Unit Mobility at Saxony Economic Development Corporation, were the other speakers.