Grow your SME Business through developing opportunities in the Gulf states

• Interested in doing business with the Gulf States?                 

• Not sure where or how to proceed?                                      

• Are you aware of the development being planned in the markets?

• Do you think that Infrastructure only means opportunities for construction related companies and products?

• Do you think your service or product could sell in the markets?

• Are you already in the region but wish to expand?

This event is aimed at assisting businesses to be aware and exploit the diverse range of opportunities that exist within infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and the U.A.E

This event will:

Identify - detail some of the major projects currently being undertaken and planned for the region and the opportunities they present.

Assess - how to research the markets, realistically, for the opportunities available

Advise - how to source distributors and prepare necessary shipping documentation

Share - experiences via a series of case studies from companies who have succeeded in the market

If you’re looking for a practical, no-nonsense guide led by actual exporting companies already succeeding in doing business in the Gulf States then this event is for you.

Experts who have spent many years doing business in the region will be available for discussions during a networking lunch and at the end of the event to cover any topics in further detail.

Wednesday 29^th February 2012

11am – 3pm

The Beeches, Bournville, Birmingham

Cost is just £30 per person

This will include a buffet lunch & coffee

To book on to this event or find out more about the speakers and itinary email Bob Garbett on ..

www.gtnetwork.co.uk

Novauris Announces Global Sales and Marketing Alliance with Panasonic in Embedded Speech Recognition

Partnership kicks off with the introduction of NovaLite™, a large-vocabulary embedded speech recognition software product for consumer electronics platforms

"We see our alliance with Panasonic as providing a real step forward in embedded speech recognition, benefitting from Panasonic's experience in developing extremely compact ASR software in many languages."

Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) January 09, 2012

Novauris Technologies (http://www.novauris.com), a leading provider of speech recognition software technology for mobile and consumer electronics, today announced an embedded automatic speech recognition (ASR) strategic partnership with Panasonic System Networks in Japan, including the joint development of NovaLite™, a software automatic speech recognizer to be offered to consumer electronics manufacturers who want to voice-enable their products.

SAUDI ARABIA MARKET ENTRY AND START-UP CONSIDERATIONS

Local representation

Saudi Law does not require foreign companies to appoint a commercial agent to

do business in the Kingdom. Firms can make direct sales to the private sector

from outside Saudi Arabia. In practice, however, appointing an agent or

distributor is the most common procedure for companies wishing to enter the

Saudi market. Virtually all government purchasing is conducted by local tenders

and in the majority of cases only Saudi Arabian companies may bid. Foreign firms

need a Saudi agent to compete for Saudi government tenders. The relationship

between a foreign contractor and his Saudi agent is regulated by the Ministry of

Commerce (MoC).

Exclusivity

Saudi Law permits the appointment of more than one agent on a regional basis,

and for particular products. Many companies, however, prefer to appoint a sole

agent to avoid conflict of interest and possible mix-ups, especially when bidding

for government contracts.

Local Regulations

 Commercial agency agreements in Saudi Arabia are controlled by Royal Decree

and by the MoC. Any agency/distributorship contract should follow the standard

format approved by the MoC and must be submitted to the MoC for registration.

In particular, it should specify whether the agent will solicit business for the

foreign principal in return for a commission or buy goods from the foreign

BRAZIL WORLD CUP 2014 BRAZIL OLYMPIC GAMES 2016

Ten Top Tips on Doing Business with Brazil

RESEARCH AND PLAN EARLY

Is there a market there for you?

Is your competitive edge in the UK

transferable to Brazil?

Desk research via the internet,suppliers, customers, trade associations,trade journal editors and exhibition organisers can be free of charge.

2. SEEK OUT EARLY SOURCES OF ADVICE AND EXPERTISE

 This should save you time and money on wasteful activity and help mitigate risk

.

3. GET IN TOUCH WITH A GLOBAL SUPPORT NETWORK THROUGH UK TRADE & INVESTMENT

 Find your local International Trade Adviser and overseas-based Trade Officer through

www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk and select

“Find your local trade team”.

4. CONSIDER YOUR PRICING STRATEGY

 Pricing must be competitive – US dollar or Brazilian Real pricing is the norm.

5. THINK ABOUT LANGUAGE IMPLICATIONS

 Make the effort to produce brochures in Brazilian Portuguese – it makes a difference. Also, think about translation of parts of your website.

6. THINK ABOUT CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS

 Make sure your business cards are up to date and any titles included – Brazilians place a lot of importance on titles and good-quality business cards Take business suits – Brazilians generally wear formal suits to all meetings. Try to visit Brazilians at their offices, rather than invite them to your hotel. Consider using the Export Communications Review:

7. THINK ABOUT YOUR STRATEGY

 It is often beneficial to have a local partner or local presence. Think about your strategy – can your business model support margin reduction or transfer of intellectual property?

8. ARRANGE A PROGRAMME OF VISITS IN THE MARKET

 If you are new to business in Brazil, it is strongly advisable to arrange a programme of meetings through the local UK Trade & Investment office or other local contacts prior to travel.

In planning your itinerary, allow time at the end of your stay in Brazil to pay a second visit to those potential clients who have asked you to come back and see them again.

Be prepared to socialise and do working lunches. Do not over-cram your time with meetings.

Allow plenty of time between meetings, as the larger cities can get very congested with traffic.

 9. TAKE PART IN A GUIDED MARKET VISIT

 To take advantage of travel grants, local contacts, experienced mission leaders and business networking, why not consider joining a group-guided and supported market visit with UK Trade& Investment.

10. FOLLOW UP

 Don’t forget to follow up and don’t let the contacts go cold. Stay in touch with your Brazilian contact/partner; don’t let relationships drift, and visit the market regularly.

http://www.gtnetwork.co.uk

It's estimated as many as 121 million Indians are logged onto the internet.

It is a sizeable number, but still a relatively small proportion of the country's 1.2 billion population.

Predictions suggest the ways Indians use the internet for business and pleasure will change even further in the next year.

"Soon, there'll be more mobile phones than people in India," jokes Ankur Agarwal, the editor of the Indian gadget blog onlygizmo.com.

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In his cramped office in a Mumbai suburb, he is surrounded by boxes filled with the latest technology ready to be reviewed and tested.

Many of the boxes contain the latest smartphones, waiting to be launched onto the Indian consumer.

Mr Agarwal's assertions about the Indian phone population might seem outlandish when you think there are 1.2bn people living in the country, but with mobile phone use rocketing, it's a prediction that could come true in the not too distant future.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India estimates that there will be an additional 200 million new mobile subscribers in the coming year.

According to research aggregated by wearesocial.net, there are more than 898 million mobile subscribers in India, 292 million of these living in rural areas.

The same data showed that 346 million Indian mobile users had subscribed to data packages, with more than half of all internet users in the country accessing the web via their mobile phone.

India's internet

• 2% - Number of rural Indians using the internet
• 25% - Growth in Indian internet users in India over the past 12 months.
• 59% - Number of Indians who only access the internet via mobile devices.

Source: wearesocial.sg

"The mobile phone will drive internet use in India in 2012," says Mr Agarwal. "Computing begins with the mobile and its growth is fast in India."

He believes that the increase in smartphone and internet capable phones, selling below Rs5,000 (£61; $94)and built by Indian manufacturers, is making it easier and more affordable to own such devices.

The increase in uptake of 3G and 2G services in India will also help get more people online. However, there are still issues getting this kind of connectivity into remote areas.

Even when it is available, the cost is prohibitive to many.   Almost half of India's internet users access the web through their mobiles

$50 tablet

Other portable devices could also make an impact when it comes to Indians accessing the internet.

The government plans to roll out its low-cost tablet device, known as Aakash, into schools nationwide in 2012. Costing around $50, it has been hailed as a huge innovation for India and the way the web can be accessed in schools.

Mr Agarwal says it will allow more children to watch videos, carry course information without the need to have a teacher around, and will put pupils at the forefront of new technology.

But the devices are still very basic, compared with other tablets on the market, and rely on good wi-fi connections and electricity supply, prerequisites which are not always available in more remote parts of India.

In fact, one of the biggest challenges in the year ahead is increasing internet penetration in these areas.

Only 2% of rural India has access to the web, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). That's a small percentage when you think that more than 70% of the population lives outside an urban conurbation.

"Even if you give them the technology, what you also need to do is generate awareness about how to use it and create a sense of access for the people of the community," says P Niranjana from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.

Being able to use new technology requires certain skills like literacy and computer literacy, she says, and more work needs to be done in this area so villagers understand how computers are enriching their lives.

The other issue, says Ms Niranjana, is ensuring the computers in the villages are placed in an area where all members of the community - including lower-caste Dalits - have the chance to use them. Currently, around 18% of India's rural internet users have to walk more than 10km (six miles) to access the web.

Social networking

Aside from access and reach, the other big change when it comes to India and the internet is how people are using the web. With better connections, mobile phones and computers, Indians are increasingly using the internet for more than just checking their email.

In both rural and urban areas, social networking is a key driver of use. The most popular site in India is now Facebook, which in the past six months saw its user base grow by more than a third.

The professional networking site Linkedin is also seeing greater uptake in India. The country has the second largest number of users for the site, according to figures from socialbakers.com.

Online videos and music are another area which will see huge growth in the coming year says Tarun Abhichandani, group business director for IMRB, an Indian market research organisation.

Mr Abhichandani says this is driven by the fact the lion's share of India's internet users are young males.

More than half of the country's population is under the age of 25, a huge potential market for internet businesses.

This net-savvy generation is also helping to build e-commerce in India. The number of transactions made online has been growing: in the past year, the value of online business in India was estimated to be worth about $10bn.

Revenue generation

Mr Abhichandai says we can expect to see mobile commerce, also known as m-commerce, take off in the next year.

Some 13 billion adverts are already sent to mobile devices in India every month, a source of frustration to many users but a valuable source of revenue for marketers. In fact, two-thirds of all Indian e-commerce comes from mobile devices.

What Indians do online

• 3 hours - Average time an Indian net user spends on social media.
• 13m - Number of Indians registered on matrimonial or dating sites.
• 70% of Indian internet users who watch online videos.

Source: wearesocial.sg

The biggest change, when it comes to content, will be the provision of more non-English websites in a country where hundreds of languages are spoken.

"We only have so many English speakers in the country, so we would want more local language translations of all the websites that are available to Indian users," Mr Abhichandani says.

"People are mostly comfortable speaking in their own language especially in specific regions, so Indian users are waiting for that kind of content to come up."

Websites such as Wikipedia are already trying to push regional language content.

Internet use in India overall is predicted to grow, but challenges of reach and technology will determine just who logs on and how.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16354076

When I joined ACO in 1991, as a Finance Director, our export department was one person, piles of paper and files and numerous models of commercial airlines sitting on top of the overfull filing cabinets.

As I got my feet “under the table” and started to understand the Company and its business, I noticed that our export sales could be very erratic.  For the next 3-4 years our Export Manager would keep saying “it’s the nature of the business”; “it’s very competitive out there”; “we are up against local manufacturers”.  On top of this was the credit control issue: “they will pay us!”; “I will talk to him”; “he’s having difficulties, but we will get paid”; “I’m going there next week.  I will sort it.”  Of course, during these times we also had some phenomenal successes, some difficulties but the trend was always growth and expansion.  We also got paid in the majority of cases.

Then I became the Managing Director and immediately our Export Manager said “you must come to the Middle East/Asia/Far East”; “no Managing Director has been to this market, you must come and “fly the flag””.  He was right and so I agreed to join him.

My first ever “export” trip was to Kuwait, Bahrain and Dubai.  My second to Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong, soon afterwards.  More followed.

The learning curve was almost vertical.  After travelling for 36 hours you would find yourself involved in commercial negotiations, held at a much greater intensity than back in the UK.  Real skill was needed here.  It was apparent that an awareness of the ‘local’ business style was of paramount importance.  Interpreting your agent’s, or distributor’s,

SOUTH AFRICA – Market Entry and Start Up Considerations

Business types

 Choice is the keyword when it comes to setting up a business in South Africa.There are several types of companies that can be established. Various factors will influence the company type one sets up. A brief description of company types is given below.

Limited liability companies

 A limited liability company allows great flexibility and is often the preferred choice for joint ventures. Limited liability companies have two types: private and public. The aforementioned Companies Act

The promise of easy money has led to a number of unwary business people being caught up in various scams such as the ones listed below:

• Cheque payment fraud or credit card fraud.

• Request for advance fee for registration or pre-qualification for contract – also known as “419 fraud”.

• Transfer of funds from fictitious over-invoiced or failed contracts.

• Promise of phantom contract or supplies.

• Lottery scam that you have won a large sums of money.

• Invitation to share huge amount inherited.

• Request for bank details or bank accounts. 419 scams have a similar pattern. It is often the case that hundreds of emails ,letters or faxes are sent out in the hope of snaring one potential victim.

 You only have to look at the Beijing sky-line to realise how key construction has been to China's boom.

As the gleaming skyscrapers, the fancy shopping malls, the towering apartment blocks have all gone up, property prices have risen with them.

They have increased at least fivefold in the last decade in cities across China, according to state media.

But in recent months, those in the property sector have gone from giddy to gloomy.

That is because property prices are beginning to fall and sales are down sharply.

Property developers are slashing prices by as much as a third in some new projects across the country.

Rules of the game

In some cases, this has led to protests from people who bought apartments only to see new buyers offered hefty discounts.

Some analysts, such as JP Morgan, believe the property market could drop by as much as 20% in the country's major cities within the next 12 to 18 months.

 “Start Quote

China's property prices are so high that they no longer make sense”

End Quote Hu Jinhui vice-president, 5i5j group

"China's property prices are so high that they no longer make sense," says Hu Jinhui, vice president of 5i5j group, one of the country's largest real estate agencies.

"We're seeing investors move out of the private property sector to the commercial sector or overseas property market. Smaller developers face becoming bankrupt," he said.

"The property sector will remain a major sector in Chinese investment but the rules of the game have changed."

China's property market took off a decade ago after the authorities privatised much of the country's housing stock.

China has taken measures to cool Beijing's overheated property market

According to state media, there were only 1,000 sales of second-hand homes in Beijing in 2000. In contrast, there were over 200,000 sales last year.

With rising prices, property was always seen as a safe bet for many Chinese investors with few other places to put their money.

A lending boom following the global financial crisis in 2008 pushed prices up further.

Since last year, however, the authorities have taken measures to cool down the market such as restricting the number of properties individuals can buy and increasing the minimum down payment required on investments.

Part of the reason was to make housing more affordable. These measures are now biting.

No panic yet

But Patrick Chovanec - an economist based in Beijing - warns that the downturn could extend far beyond the property market.

"Property prices underpin almost all the lending that takes place in the Chinese economy," he said.

"China's economy has been driven in the last few years by lending.

"Just like the US and Europe, the ramifications of a housing market rising and falling extends far beyond construction and that proportion of the economy."

But property prices are not just about economics, they are also about confidence.

Many middle-class Chinese favour Ikea to furnish their homes

For millions of Chinese, owning their home has become a symbol of success, that their lives are getting better.

Those without homes will welcome the drop as it may offer them a chance to get on the property ladder.

The Beijing branch of Swedish furniture giant Ikea is where many middle-class Chinese come to furnish their homes.

Outside the store, some expressed concern over falling prices.

"The property market is full of bubbles," said Liang Xiaoyu, 30, one of the customers.

"A drop in prices will probably be healthy. But if the market declines too much, it could cause problems for the economy."

There may not be outright panic yet but there is concern.

The worry is that the foundations of the world's second-largest economy may not be as firm as many thought.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16009050#story_continues_2

UK Trade & Investment is looking for the UK’s best new export ideas and on 10 November launched ‘The Exporting for Growth Prize’ competition. Encouraging export growth is vital for the UK economy, and benefits our entire business community. Help us to help your small business expand and prosper overseas.

To enter simply click here: www.ukti.gov.uk/exportingforgrowthprize

Closing date 13th January 2012!