Paris [France], April 12 (ANI): Union Minister of Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal on Tuesday (local time) invited French businessmen to invest in India highlighting ways to further deepen the India-France partnership and realise the tremendous opportunities it offers. “I am inviting you to visit India along with your board members. French people can come to India as tourists and investors to get good returns. I invite you (France) to do business with India, increase trade between us and initiate a technology partnership between 2 countries,” he said.
He further said that India is one of the largest consumers of goods and services. “Over the last two years, our exports of goods and services have grown by over 50 per cent. By 2030, we hope to see our exports of goods and services from India triple from the existing level of about USD 765 billion to USD 2 trillion,” said Goyal.
He said that the Statue of Unity and the Eiffel Tower bring together two beloved countries and peoples with shared values of democracy, unity-commitment to diversity, principles of global trade rules etc, during a conversation at the Gala Dinner in Paris.
Goyal is in Paris for the India-France Business Summit, commemorating 25 years of India-France friendship.
Piyush Goyal and Olivier Becht, France’s Minister delegate of Foreign Trade, Attractiveness and French Nationals Abroad co-chaired the India-France Business Summit, commemorating 25 years of India-France friendship, on Tuesday in Paris.
“Glad to welcome you to Paris, dear @PiyushGoyal, on the occasion of the France-India economic forum. As we celebrate 25 years of our strategic partnership this year, our two countries share a long and vigorous economic relationship,” tweeted Becht.
Goyal also met Pierre Courduroux, CEO of Roquette in Paris.
“It was a pleasure to meet Mr. Pierre Courduroux, CEO of Roquette in Paris. As the company strengthens its presence in India, deliberated on ways to further enhance its investments in the country’s growing agriculture & food processing sector,” tweeted Goyal.
He also met Luc Remont, CEO of French energy major EDF in Paris.
“Met Mr. Luc Remont, CEO of French energy major EDF in Paris. Discussed how the company can be a significant part of India’s journey to achieve the ambitious target of energy diversification for sustainable growth,” tweeted Goyal.
Meanwhile, the Co-Founder and CEO of Carpooling application BlaBlaCar, Nicolas Brusson, spoke about the scope and growth of the application in the Indian market.
Brusson earlier met Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal in Paris.
“The main discussion was actually what BlaBlaCar can do and how it can grow in India,” he said.
BlaBlaCar allows drivers to share their cars when they drive between cities. It’s intercity carpooling, for example, if you drive from Mumbai to Pune and you have two or three empty seats in your car, you can go and buy a car, set up your profile, BlaBlaCar verifies your profile, and then you can start offering empty seats when you travel between the two cities. And passengers can book those seats and share the cost of the journey.
“Today, to give you a sense of size, we have 4 million active users in 2022 in India, and it’s roughly doubling year on year. So it’s really sort of like exploding right now,” said Brusson.
Speaking on future plans for India Brusson said that BlaBlaCar is working on finding the right hubs.
“There are some regions like Mumbai to Pune we see, like in the west of New Delhi, Delhi to Chandigarh. So you have these sort of corridors or regions where carpooling actually makes a lot of sense, typically because public transport is not that good or it’s too crowded or too expensive,” he said.
Speaking on the competition with Uber and Ola, he said, “Uber and Ola tend to be very different because it’s all about aggregating. Professional drivers typically for shorter distances within a city and the price point is pretty high. So typically it would be like 10-20 rupees per kilometre. Whereas in our case, people are the car owners are just like, quote-unquote, normal people.”
Speaking about IMF and World Bank said that India is the best destination to invest, he said, “I think it’s very good. Like when you have meetings like the one I had with the Minister, you realize that as foreign companies and as European companies, you feel pretty welcome in India.”
“If you look at private cars, unlike in Europe, it’s growing in India. So in five or ten years, there will be more private cars in India, maybe fewer in France or Germany. As the population is sometimes decreasing and private car ownership is decreasing, it is increasing in India. And it’s probably easier and more transformative for companies like India than it is in Europe,” said Brusson. (ANI)
