From left: Umesh Gautam, Ashish Chandra, Gaurav Mehta, T.S. Prakash, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Kishore Reddy, Monisha Abraham, Dipak Das, Sanjay Baid and Samrat Datta

The board of the Indian CEO Forum-Sri Lanka (ICF) recently met Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who was on a visit to Sri Lanka. The ICF had an interactive meeting with Chandrasekaran and highlighted on the positive environment opportunities for investments in Sri Lanka. 

The CEO team, led by the forum’s President T.S. Prakash, stated that the member companies represent diverse industries and thanked the Tata group for already having investments in many fields in Sri Lanka and also mentioned that Sri Lanka provides lots of opportunities for new investments. 
He said the objective of the ICF is to promote economic growth in Sri Lanka through Indian investment, safeguard and strengthen the existing economic cooperation, foster new economic ties between India and Sri Lanka and provide an open forum for the business leaders of Indian origin, who are employed with Indian multinationals and Sri Lankan business organisations in Sri Lanka.

Chandrasekaran said, “We need to identify the sectors which would help Sri Lanka; one of it is of course, tourism, which has a huge potential. We need to shortlist three other sectors in which India could successfully invest.” 
Chandrasekaran also mentioned that Sri Lanka is a beautiful country and is looking into understanding the opportunities for investments. ICF Vice President Kishore Reddy briefed Chandrasekaran on the ‘Shine Lanka’ initiative of the forum, to promote trade and investments. Through this programme, the ICF can assist and guide investments into Sri Lanka in various fields and initially it will be concentrating on tourism, IT, education, industries and infrastructure.

The board members of the ICF had a very interactive meeting with Chandrasekaran on the stability on the social and economic front, with the efforts of the government post the crisis the country had gone through and also discussed the current economic situation, various fields of investments that can assist Sri Lanka to further grow into a sustainable economy.
The team included ICF President T.S. Prakash (Umesh Modi Group), Vice President Kishore Reddy (Platinum Investments), Past President Umesh Gautam (Lanka Ashok Leyland PLC), Dipak Das (Lanka IOC), Ashish Chandra (Bharti Airtel), Sanjay Baid (Niru Group), Gaurav Mehta (Powertech), Monisha Abraham (CTC) and Samrat Datta (Taj Hotels).