The Indo-American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Houston (IACCGH) under the leadership of Pankaj Dhume successfully hosted two events recently leveraging the power of the internet to connect Houston and India.

On Tuesday, March 5th, IACCGH hosted a Webinar on “Impact of the new India Budget for Fiscal 2013-2014 on NRIs”. The Webinar was chaired & moderated by Mr Sunil Shenoy and the content was provided by Sanjay Grover and Heetesh Veera, Tax Partners at Ernst & Young Pvt Ltd, India. The program was possible thanks to the support of Tejas Mody & Mithun D’Souza, India Tax Desk at Ernst & Young LLP New York. A complete recording of the webinar, the presentation and highlights are available by contacting the IACCGH by email at info@iaccgh.com.

On Friday, March 15th, IACCGH participated by live video conference in the IACC Pune Annual Fellowship Night (AFN). IACCGH President Pankaj Dhume, President elect Sanjay Ram and Executive Director Jagdip Ahluwalia shared an introductory video with resource partners Matthew Shailer from the Houston Mayor’s office and Genaro Peña & Jensen Shen from the Greater Houston Partnership. The video about “Why invest in Houston and how we can help potential investors” was played at the AFN and the panel from Houston made themselves available for the event to address the audience in Pune India.

In the words of Ranjit Wandrekar, Chairman of the Executive Council – 2013, IACC Pune “the AFN was indeed a successful event. A lot of people came to me after the event to tell me that they thought this was the best AFN that they had attended”. The two organizations plan to capitalize on the excitement that has been created in Pune and see this as the first step in a thriving joint venture aimed at attracting and closing some real business deals between companies in Pune and Houston in the next months to come.

IACCGH is planning similar outreach events with other IACC Chambers in India & encouraging them to bring trade delegations to invest in Houston. The IACCGH, the Mayor’s office and the GHP have a common goal of economic growth and creating local jobs in Houston.

In picture of the Houston team on the video call to Pune (left to right): Jensen Shen Director, Asia, Australia and Oceania Greater Houston Partnership; Genaro J. Peña, VP – Int’l Investment & Trade, Greater Houston Partnership; Jagdip Ahluwalia, Executive Director, IACCGH; Pankaj Dhume, President, IACCGH; Sanjay Ramabhadran, President Elect, IACCGH; Matthew T. Shailer, Special Assistant to the Mayor, International Trade & Development, Mayor’s Office, City of Houston.

Please contact the IACCGH if you would like to learn more about how we can help you network locally as well as in India.