Ajit Someshwar, born in Bombay (Mumbai) in India in 1955, is working on a two-volume account, India Inc, of the history and influence of the twenty million strong Indian diaspora and the emergence of India as a superpower with geopolitical influence in the world.

Career

Ajit took an honours degree in commerce at the University of Bombay and obtained his chartered accountancy qualifications in India before moving to the United Kingdom, where he again qualified as a CA. He is one of the few Indian-born accountants to have qualified in both countries. He was a senior manager from 1987-1992 for KPMG Peat Marwick Thorne, acting as a consultant to the Ontario Insurance Review Board on costing and analysis of public automobile insurance models. From 1992-1998, Someshwar was vice president of operations, planning and analysis for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s bank assurance venture, where he was instrumental in introducing direct P&C Insurance to Canada for the first time.

Someshwar moved to Canada from London and went on to launch and become president and chief executive of a large information technology and risk management company, CSI Consulting, based in Toronto, which turns over more than $30 million Cdn, with an average yearly increase of 48 per cent since it was founded in 1998. The CSI Group employs more than 400 consultants, based in the United States, Canada, India and Europe. Its operations are increasingly global in scope, and reflect the growing interest among western corporations looking to India for alternative solutions to managing their technology and risk management systems. Someshwar is also chairman and chief executive of Bates Management Consulting Inc., and director of Iter 8, a technology solutions company specializing in simplifying insurance systems for business.

Someshwar is active in promoting Indian affairs overseas and in aspects of international relations. He has written, for example, in the Jerusalem Post on changing Israeli policies and attitudes towards India. He served as president of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (1991-93), where he introduced an awards program to recognize the work of distinguished Indian people in Canada. His comments on the programme: "Unless we recognize our people on our own, nobody will recognize them. We have to first show it to ourselves that our people are real achievers. If we do not have recognition programs, Canada is not going to do it for us. This is one excellent way to raise the Indo-Canadian profile." The Chamber has grown from eighty to more than a thousand members. Someshwar is an active speaker and participant in public policy forums such as the Canadian Coalition for Democracy – an agency promoting democracy throughout the world. He is also an active fundraiser for hospitals and charities.

Someshwar is married to a visual arts promoter, Shylee Holla, who had a show, Visual Rhythms, at the Design Exchange in Toronto.

The Indian diaspora

The diaspora includes some 2.5 million people in the United States and close to a million in Canada. They have been successful in many walks of life, but especially in high-tech ventures. Some 300,000 live in San Jose, in California’s Silicon Valley, where they are responsible for a disproportionately high percentage of business startups. In the UK too, there are now seven Indian sterling billionaires. Their activities range from steel to online gambling.

Diaspora Indians include the third-richest man in the world, the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, and they have made significant contributions offshore in medicine, science, high-tech industries and the arts. That contribution has not been recognised in the West as fully as it might be, at least in the opinion of commentators who have complained about racist attitudes to people from the Indian sub-continent in a number of nations. Diaspora Indians constitute a large percentage of American doctors and a substantial proportion of scientists and engineers, including many of those at NASA and Microsoft. In such service areas as hotels and motels, they own 40 per cent of all rooms in the United States.

Ajit believes that much of the Indian success in business, academia, science, medicine and the arts is attributable to high standards of education and adaptability, together with good business and social networking.

The forthcoming book

India Inc looks at the increasing success of Indians abroad and at their penetration of many markets and professions. The book looks first at “The Other India” of the diaspora. These are the growing numbers – possibly as high as 25 million – of Indians living and working abroad, some very successful in service industries such as hotels, some high-tech billionaires, some distinguished academics. The second volume looks at India itself, its interactions with the diaspora, and how the mother country may benefit by adopting some of the flexible strategies developed by entrepreneurs living abroad, a number of them billionaires in a broad range of industries.