It's Destination Kanpur for India's top industrialists. Investments may take a while in coming, but at least 50 CEOs of India's largest companies have agreed to take part in a two-day brainstorming session in Kanpur on February 20 and 21 to give their inputs on developing Brand UP.
The event -- UP Calling, 2004 -- is being organised by The IndUS Entrepreneurs in association with Nasscom and the UP Development Council.
Apart from Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and the ubiquitious Amar Singh, the participants' list include Anil Ambani (Reliance Industries), Kumar Manglam Birla (Aditya Birla group), Subroto Roy (Sahara group), Nandan Nilekeni (Infosys), Swati Piramal (Nicholas Piramal), Kiran Mazumdar Shaw (Biocon India), Rajat Gupta (McKinsey & Co), Raman Roy (Wipro Spectramind), Uday Singh (Sony Films) besides management guru CK Prahlad and Nasscom chief Kiran Karnik.
Keeping them company will be the chiefs of the Small Industries Development Bank of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) and Gail India.
A large contingent of Indian-Americans from Silicon Valley is also expected besides senior representatives from companies like Shanta Biotech, HCL, HCL Perot, Ranbaxy, amongst others.
"It was long overdue," says Sanjeev Shreyya, TIE-UP president, referring to the fact that that this would be the second such meeting after two years.
Asked what the state has gained from the last such meeting, Shreyya said such meeting helped create a positive ambienceand were not expected to yield immediate results.
"Networking is important and UP Calling should be seen as the beginning of a process," he said.
Shreyya said the meeting would also hardsell UP as an investment destination. UP had trained manpower, resources, infrastructure and market, and could become the front-line state of the country.