ECONOMIC Development are granting £50,000 of a £505,000 top-up grant to Jersey Finance to develop financial services links with India.

The announcement follows an Indian ‘angels’ breakfast yesterday at which leading businessmen suggested a number of opportunities for joint ventures.

Key speaker Saurabh Srivastava, a member of the Indian Angel Network, explained that currently Indian firms tended to grow by acquisition, but there were relatively few fledgling Indian businesses.

‘That’s were we come in,’ he explained. ‘We have 75 members now, all very high profile, the most successful entrepreneurs. It is good for all of us, because we expect to make a lot of money out of it.’

Mr Srivastava, an IT entrepreneur and founder of what is now Xansa plc, said that one of their earlier investments had grown to a market capitalisation of £10 million and had gained a return worth 20 times as much as the original sum invested.

*Pictured are speakers Hanuman Tripathi, Wayne Gallichan, Saurabh Srivastava, Puneet Vatsayan and Padmaja Ruparel