It has been exactly five months since I assumed charge as the President of this glorious Chamber. What an action packed five months it has been with all your insights and support!

Dozens of seminars and workshops. One international trade delegation to Northern Ireland. A seminal benchmarking report on industrial estates in Tamil Nadu that’s in final stages of publishing. Multiple liaison meetings with key ministers and secretaries of different departments of the governments, both at the state and the centre. A great opportunity to design and drive a special session at the Global Investors Meet. A number of opportunities to work closely with Ambassadors and Consul Generals of different countries. And opportunities to curate interesting programs with several institutions of higher learning in the State. All these happened with one singular focus—delivering superior value to our members and enhancing their business experience.

While I may not be able to cover all the happenings at the Chamber in this short note, I would like to focus on a few initiatives and activities that I believe would be of great interest to the members:

1. At a special workshop, the General Committee brainstormed on how to (i) sustain and enhance the relevance of the Chamber and amplify member value, engagement and experience (ii) own areas of distinctive importance to the state and the country, set the agenda and drive the narrative (iii) enable ease of doing business and ease of living (iv) help companies to be both a business and a social enterprise. A core team has been formed to drive this charter and come up with a roadmap to MCCI@200 years. You will hear more from us on this in the coming months.

2. At the Global Investors Meet in Jan 2019, the Chamber curated a special session titled, “Making Chennai a next-generation financial services hub”. Chennai, as many of you are aware, has been a pioneer in the financial services industry for over 300 years. In today’s context, with technology and financial services talent being the two key ingredients for next-generation financial services, Tamil Nadu is uniquely positioned to be the domestic as well as the global hub for all aspects of financial services. This session highlighted what Tamil Nadu can do to be the Number 1 destination for next-generation financial services activities. I would encourage all of you to watch the six-minute video that the Chamber created for this event and also view the recording of the entire 90-minute session whenever it’s made available by the organizers.

3. Many of you who were at the Chamber Day would recollect that we publicly announced that the Chamber would play an important role in strengthening industry-academia collaboration. We even publicly stated that we will have over 50 senior industry representatives on the Boards of Studies, Academic Councils, Senate and Syndicates of universities and other institutions of higher learning in the state. The Education Committee has made good headway. If any of your senior leaders are interested in being a part of this initiative, please do write to the Secretariat and we will take it forward from there. On my part, I recently joined the Senate of the Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University and have started contributing to the deliberations.

The Chamber strongly believes in taking the lead in driving greater industry academia linkage, and on this occasion, I would like to thank many senior leaders of member companies who spent quality time at day-long events at several colleges, including Ethiraj College and Asan Memorial College in Chennai, and Vivekananda College in Thiruchengode.

4. Finally, with the onset of Industry 4.0, where the industrial and digital worlds are converging, many members have told us they would like to see more action on this front. The Chamber organized a one-day event, “Phygital2018”, which was a big hit among members from across industries. I would like to thank the IT Committee for spearheading this program.

Likewise, seminars on “Roadmap to Zero waste in Chennai”, “Legal Conclave”, “Conference for Independent Directors”, “Power Conference”, and “GST Insights” saw significant attendance from our member companies and the feedback has consistently been good. Keep writing to us on any important topics on you want us to organize events and we will be more than happy to work with the experts and get them organized.

Before I close, I want to share with all of you that we are looking to enhance the frequency of communication with all our members. We are looking to move all our communication to the digital mode. We are also working on enhancing our updates through multiple social channels—that way, communication will be truly interactive!

On behalf of the Vice President, Past Presidents, members of the General Committee, members of the Expert Committee, the Secretariat, and my personal behalf, let me wish

you all a healthy, happy and fulfilling 2019.

I guess it’s never too late to wish good luck!