This Article is From Nov 07, 2014

Modi Express Ready, Awaits PM in Australia

(Nalin S Kohli is spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Director of the party's Public Policy Research Centre. He is also a lawyer and has extensive experience in media and education.)

Indians all over the world are recognised for their technical as well as entrepreneurial capabilities. The Indian diaspora is a thriving, vibrant community, and like the one back home, full of diversity. Millions of first and second-generation Indians who left the safety and security of Indian shores for the promise of a better economic future have succeeded despite the odds in the countries they moved to. Often theirs is a story of grit, determination, years of hard work primarily fuelled by the passion of ambition and pursuit of success.

Srikanth and Brinda have one such story. An IT expert based in Melbourne, Srikanth quit a high-paying job earning him well over 1,30,000 Australian dollars annually to begin an unexpected enterprise.  Driven by the need to eat fresh dosas and questing to make  perfect dosa batter at home throughout the year despite the challenges of Australian weather, Srikanth and his wife Brinda invested their lives savings to start Dosa Joy and YesGees in 2005.

But the venture proved to be difficult. The couple lived for months on end with an average daily bank balance of less than  100 Australian dollars. The payments from the preceding week's deliveries fuelled the next week's supplies. A hand-to-mouth business existence was the norm.

Yet they tenaciously hung on to their dream. Finally in 2012, things started looking up. Today they sell 3,000 kilograms of preservative-free dosa batter along with other products. The demand for their badam milk and mango lassi outstrips the unit's capacity on a daily basis. For World Vegan Day on 9th November, Sri and Brinda are confident that at least 10% of the 15,000 crowd, primarily comprising non-Indian Australian visitors, will eat crisp dosas made by young Sukhbir (an immigrant worker from Ferozpur Punjab) and purchase batter to take back home.

The list of this sort of Indian enterprise is un-ending here in Australia. Vincent Sequeira started out in a garage in 1977 to become a multi-million dollar importer and wholesaler-retailer of products to suit Indian, South Asian and even Australian taste buds. He recalls how 30 years ago, it was mostly Anglo-Indians who came to Australia to "run the railways".

Siddharth Suresh, Srikanth Balan and Vinay Sharma, high-end professionals and friends, jointly run the popular Indian Executive Awards, another success story, to celebrate such accomplishment.

But there is more that binds these entrepreneurs together. Each one of them is visibly invigorated when the topic of India and Narendra Modi's impending visit to Australia comes up for discussion. From among thousands of such professionals and aspirants, over 21,000 have signed up to hear Prime Minister Modi speak live at the Allphones Arena in Sydney. 15,000 of those who signed up first will be inside the arena, others are traveling hundreds of miles to watch Prime Minister Modi  over large projection screens outside the venue. The local government in Victoria, to ferry people from Melbourne to Sydney for the event, has introduced a special Modi Express train.   

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted "My Australia visit is both special & historic. It will be the 1st bilateral visit to Australia by an Indian PM in 28 years" little might he have imagined the extent of excitement that eagerly awaits his arrival on the continent. Even as he is yet to touch these shores, for the Indian Diaspora here, the India story has begun.

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