Collaborating for a better future

GEELONG’S relationship with India, the world’s fastest-growing economic powerhouse, has taken a crucial step forward.

Last week, the first ever Geelong-India Collaborative Futures Forum brought together senior business and government figures from across India and our region to capitalise on this growth and explore opportunities for economic collaboration.

India has just passed Japan to become the world’s fourth largest economy, outstripping the world’s other major economies with an annual growth rate exceeding 7 per cent.

Or, as Australia India Business Council CEO Deepak-Raj Gupta OAM told the forum during his opening address:

“If you’re doing business for the next 50 years, India is your destination.”

To me, as chair of both Council’s Finance and Multicultural Affairs & Citizenship portfolios, strengthening Geelong’s ties with India is a no-brainer.

Already we have a solid foundation to build on as home to a rapidly growing Indian community right here in our own backyard.

More than 5,000 people living in Greater Geelong were born in India and this number has more than doubled in the past decade, making India the second-most common birthplace outside of Australia, behind the UK.

And between 2016 and 2021, Indian-born people working in Greater Geelong emerged as a rapidly growing group of local business owners.

By the 2021 Census, they were the second largest cohort of owner-managers after Australian-born residents, totalling 512 people.

So it’s clear that many of those migrating from India share the same hardworking entrepreneurial spirit my own parents had when came over from Greece several decades ago.

And that’s not to mention the thousands of Indians studying here at Deakin University and the thousands more at its Indian campus.

Deakin is a pioneer in this relationship as the first Australian university to establish a campus in India, with the first cohort graduating just recently.

The forum covered this and so much more.

It featured local success stories, such as Enterprise Monkey CEO and Founder Aamir Qutub, Aunty Jenny Spices co-founder Ramneek Wayne, Manpreet Sekhon from Eastern Spice and Care Essentials, an award-winning manufacturer and exporter of medical suppliers in North Geelong.

It also explored everything our two regions can offer each other and collaborate on, from sport, tourism and education through to agribusiness, manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

This all culminated in Bollywood dance parties and special screenings as Reading Cinemas Waurn Ponds rolled out the red carpet last Wednesday for the National Indian Film Festival of Australia.

This was the first time this festival has come to Geelong, bringing with it all the colour, energy and storytelling power of Indian cinema.

Geelong too has an impressive resume of appearances on the silver screen for a small regional city – including Mad Max and The Dressmaker.

And recently announced plans to build a new film studio in Geelong’s north offer yet another opportunity to collaborate with India’s multi-billion-dollar film industry.

As I reflect on last week’s forum, I’d like to congratulate Mayor Stretch Kontelj OAM and the Australia India Business Council on their vision in bringing it together.

If the forum showed us anything, it’s that Geelong is ready.

Ready for deeper collaboration, greater cultural exchange and to be a leading hub for the India-Australia partnership.

I can’t wait to see what we can build together.

Cr Andrew Katos

Deakin Ward, City of Greater Geelong