On Thursday 22 June 2023, global law firm Eversheds Sutherland welcomed a delegation of 40 Indian Tech companies at their Leeds offices in West Yorkshire. The visit was organised by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) in India, and the British High Commission. Delegate companies work with DBT in India and are actively looking to expand into the UK or create partnerships with UK universities. The visit to Leeds completed an extensive trip across the UK covering London, Cambridge, Manchester and Leeds, among other regions.
Led by Sijay Thomas, Tech Sector lead for the British High Commission in Mumbai, the delegation was welcomed by Simon Harris, Partner, Eversheds Sutherland and Tom Riordan, Chief Executive of Leeds City Council. Lopa Patel MBE, Chair of Diversity UK outlined the new Sound & Vision galleries being developed at the National Science & Media Museum in Bradford, ahead of the City of Culture 2025 initiative which hopes to attract 1 million visitors to Bradford. She also spoke about the Asians in Tech initiative, highlighting how the partnership between Diversity UK and Eversheds Sutherland had helped showcase the wealth of Asian talent in the UK tech ecosystem.
Lopa took the opportunity to highlight Asian Tech Pioneer Ajaz Ahmed BEM, one of the original tech entrepreneurs who founded Freeserve, which was once the UK’s largest Internet Company, in 1998. The eureka moment came when he bought a computer in PC World and nobody there could tell him how to get onto the Internet. After much persuasion, Dixons launched Freeserve in 1998, it became the UK’s largest ISP in 3 months and floated 9 months later with a market cap of £1.5bn. It entered the FTSE 100 soon after reaching a peak market cap of £9bn, Freeserve was sold by Dixons to France Telecom for £1.6bn in 2001. Ajaz left soon after the sale. He went on to found Legal365, a disruptive business model for the legal industry and runs his own business consultancy called SoSavvy. He is also Chairman of Quba, a technology agency that builds enterprise level websites for big companies. Ajaz also writes a column for Retail Week and sits on the Advisory Board at the University of Huddersfield Business School. Lopa and Tom Riordan jointly presented Ajaz Ahmed BEM with the Asian Tech Pioneer award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the UK tech sector.
About the British High Commission in India
The British High Commission in India works to enhance the India-UK relationship – that is stronger, wider, and deeper – generating more jobs, more growth and more security for our two nations. The UK-India relationship is founded on a broad range of mutual interests. We work closely together on issues as diverse as education and research, energy security and climate change, security and defence, international relations.
For further information visit: https://www.gov.uk/world/india/news