An Indian visa centre is to be opened – following a 20-year campaign by residents and politicians. The Indian High Commission has visa application offices in London and Birmingham.
Keith Vaz and Dr Virander Paul, the Indian deputy high commissioner It has now agreed to have six more and is hoping to sign a deal to base one at the Peepul Centre, in Belgrave. That would reduce the time and expense people in Leicester face when obtaining travel documents.
The move was announced at a lunch yesterday at the Peepul Centre, hosted by Leicester East MP Keith Vaz, who has led the campaign for a visa centre in the city. Dr Virander Paul, the Indian deputy high commissioner, was guest of honour at the event. He and Mr Vaz released 20 balloons in the colours of the Union and Indian flags – one to mark each year of the campaign.
Numerous letters and petitions have been presented by Mr Vaz on the issue over the past 20 years.
He said: “This is a dream come true. I cannot believe that after so many people campaigning over the past few decades it has finally happened. It will allow residents to save even more time and money. It shows a fresh commitment of the High Commission to help people of Indian origin in Leicester.”
“This is a red letter day. This is the day we can say we no longer have to go to London or Birmingham in order to get our visas to go to India. Mr Vaz said the centre in Leicester would ease pressure on the others.
The Birmingham office processes 77,000 visa application a year and in January was dealing with 515 people a day.
The MP thanked the Indian government, which he said had signed off on the decision at the highest levels.
Dr Paul said: “We have eight centres in six cities and we are going to have six more in different cities.
“I am happy to say Leicester will be one of those. It will ease the problems of the Indian-origin community in Leicester having to travel. We realistically expect that in three to four months all the new centres should be up and running.”
Evington city councillor Deepak Bajaj said the visa centre would be good for the city economy.
He said: “It will be another reason for people from outside the city to come to Leicester. It will draw in customers for our businesses and people to visit the city. The nearest current office, in Birmingham, is quite small and the queues are often large.”
Local solicitor Neelam Maher (daughter of Jaimal Arshi Modhwadia – Kettering, Northamptonshire ) has successfully completed the STEP Diploma in Trusts and Estates which now enables her to become a full member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. Neelam, an associate at QualitySolicitors Wilson Browne, advises clients on all aspects of wills, estates, tax planning and the setting up and administration of trusts.
“I act for a large number of clients who have assets in trust. Trusts can be set up during a person’s lifetime or under their wills to take effect upon death and they are flexible mechanisms which can be used to achieve many different purposes. It’s fascinating work and I really enjoy it. This qualification is really a seal of approval for me,” explained Neelam.
“It’s a fantastic achievement,” congratulated Jim Kearns who works with Neelam at the firm’s office in Higham Ferrers. “Our private client team is one of the largest in the county and Neelam is a huge asset to us.”
Growing up, Aakash Odedra’s dyslexia drove him to express himself through the vocabulary of dance.
Now Aakash, 28, from Oadby, has received funding to come up with a performance about the condition.
He is one of five young artists to be awarded a £30,000 bursary from Sky Arts Futures Fund, and was chosen from more than 800 applicants. Aakash said: “Dyslexia was something I was affected by growing up.
“There were a lot of funny moments of me reading things completely wrong, but there was the frustration of not being able to do things normally. “I managed to express myself through gestures and the arts instead and that pushed me into dance.”
This week Aakash is in Austria working with choreographers to put together a high-tech one-hour show.
He is working with ARS Electronica Futurelab, a company which will add some digital magic to the show. It will feature a touch-sensitive electronic floor which sends out ripples each time his feet hit the ground. The show is likely to premiere in London or Leicester.
Aakash said: “We are going to be using digital technology to enhance the ideas in the performance, including floor sensors and hanging sheets of gauze which project images when I move behind them. “I think each project I do gives me more influences and helps me grow subconsciously.
“It’s easy to look back and see that change after 20 years of dancing.”
Despite his physically demanding job, Aakash said staying in shape was not hard as long as he kept on dancing.
He said: “The danger is only when you stop for a week and then you have to work hard to get back to being in top condition.
“While I’m dancing it’s easy to stay in shape and I’m actually a bit of a junk food fan – pizza and falafel in particular.
“I’m in Linz, in Austria, at the moment and the chocolate here is great.”
Last July, Aakash was honoured with the title of Dancer of the Year at the Premio Danza and Danza Gala Awards after performing his dance, Rising, at the Festival Bolzano Danza in Brescia, Northern Italy.
He trains in the classical Indian dance disciplines of Kathak and Bharatanatyam, creating Rising while working with choreographers Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Russell Maliphant, who are well-known in the world of dance. The win helped him seal the grant from the Sky Arts Futures Fund.
He said: “It’s very special to be recognised as a performer. It was a privilege to perform my solo in Brescia.”
Rekha Mehr, founder of Pistachio Rose, an anglo-indian food start-up which supplies Fortnum & Mason
Starting a business is usually an all-consuming affair. The received wisdom says that evenings, weekends, partners and children must all be sacrificed in the early days if a start-up is going to have a fighting chance of survival.
So why is Rekha Mehr, whose Anglo-Indian food business is barely a year old, about to go part-time?
Rekha is daughter of Arshibhai M Karavadra from Bracknell.
Mehr’s counter-intuitive logic says that, far from representing a lack of ambition, moving to four days a week is vital to allow her company, Pistachio Rose, to grow beyond her Fulham kitchen in south-west London.
“Last year, I tried to spread myself everywhere and was trying to do everything at once. This year, I need to work smarter. Giving up a day means I’m finally going to get out of the kitchen.”
Since August, Pistachio Rose has been supplying luxury retailer Fortnum & Mason with ginger shortbread, mini chai madeleines, sweet naans and dark and white chocolate tarts. However, Mehr says she has had to turn away orders from elsewhere because one pair of hands just isn’t enough to fulfil them.
“This is about forcing myself to have good discipline. I’m not allowing myself to move forward until I fix the problem,” she said.
The 31-year-old is now in talks with a production facility to transform her venture from cottage industry into growing business. Her plan will also mean taking what many start-ups regard as a daunting step: hiring a first employee.
“The reason I haven’t done it yet is because of the anxiety over the responsibility of it. Also, you tot up the time it would take to train someone and doing it all yourself looks quicker in the short term. I’ve fallen foul of that attitude and have limited myself. Now I need to let go in order to grow.”
This kind of hands-on experience of what running a start-up is really like should stand Mehr in good stead for what she’ll be doing with her free day: advising Vince Cable’s Business Department.
Mehr is one of two “entrepreneurs in residence” who were appointed last week to advise the Government on policies that affect small and medium-sized companies. She insists the role will have been more than Government gimmickry if she can help improve the take-up of some potentially useful but little-known initiatives designed to help owner-managers.
When the former Waitrose and Amazon buyer looked around for help and advice ahead of launching Pistachio Rose early last year, she turned to the (now defunct) Business Link website.
“It was arduous; an archive of information that wasn’t easy to navigate and where it wasn’t clear what’s available, and that a lot of it is free of charge.”
In preparing for her Whitehall role – which pays £10,000 a year – Mehr says she was “surprised” by the quality of “tools” and advice that’s available.
“People are understandably sceptical, but I believe that if what is out there was communicated more clearly, there would be a much bigger uptake.
“It’s smarter ways of getting the message out for people who don’t know what’s available, but also encouragement for those who are reluctant to use [those schemes]. Those
are the conversations I want to have now.”
Mehr, who was inspired to start her cakes and sweets business when sampling street food during a trip to India, cites the Government’s ‘MentorSME’ initiative as an example. The free online service acts as a matchmaker between small businesses and experienced advisers.
“I hadn’t heard of it but now I have, I’d be a fool not to use it. What’s needed is clarification of the services and how people should access them. If I can help get information to the people who need it, and hopefully inform policy, this will have been worthwhile,” she says.
Lawrence Tomlinson, the second of the entrepreneurs advising the Government, has given himself an even more ambitious remit: to help small companies access bank finance.
The founder of the £100m LNT Group, which has interests in construction, software, chemicals, car manufacturing and care homes, Tomlinson says he wants to be a “direct line for small companies to go through to let the Government know what’s really going on in the economy”.
For him, that reality is “businesses being starved of credit”. The Leeds-based entrepreneur, who bought a single care home from his parents in 1988 and went on to sell the business for £180m, wants to put pressure on the Government to take a tougher line with lenders.
“There are opportunities to make the nationalised banks lend, rather than simply asking – it’s the biggest topic of concern for businesses.
“The banks have had the carrot since 2008, they’ve been found guilty of all sorts in the meantime, from fixing Libor to mis-selling; at what point do you force them to lend?”
For Tomlinson, the biggest problem is that banks have disempowered local relationship managers in favour of centralised credit committees – so-called “computer says no” banking.
He believes that power needs to be given back to “local people who know and understand local businesses”.
While banks publicly dismiss this argument, blaming parlous lending figures on a lack of demand, they will privately admit there’s some truth in the accusation.
Lord Green, the former chairman of HSBC and now the Government’s trade minister, has said as much. “Over time banks [lost] strong talent in business banking. The central risk management function responds by disempowering them and you get into this downward spiral [of poor lending decisions],” he told MPs earlier this year.
Tomlinson says the ideal solution would be to help lenders develop services that occupy a “halfway house” between “Bank of Dave” – a tiny community bank started by a Burnley entrepreneur which featured in a Channel 4 television programme – and nationalised giant, the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In reality, one man is unlikely to be able to do much to ease such an intractable problem – but Tomlinson will at least represent another voice from within at the Business Department, advocating a tougher line on banks and measures to boost competition.
“I can only reflect what businesses tell me and my own experiences and I’m going to voice those concerns,” he said. “Something has got to be done.”
Rekha and Lawrence Tomlinson are to become the entrepreneurs in residence at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Business Secretary Vince Cable is set to get advice from two successful entrepreneurs appointed to help the government address the needs of small and medium sized businesses.
Rekha is daughter of Arshibhai M Karavadra from Bracknell.
Business owners Lawrence Tomlinson and Rekha Mehr are to become the entrepreneurs in residence at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) after fighting off competition from over 200 other applicants.
Experienced Leeds-based entrepreneur Lawrence Tomlinson has run businesses in a number sectors including construction, software, chemicals, cars, and care homes.
Rekha Mehr is the founder and owner of Pistachio Rose, a London-based business creating high-end Anglo-Indian cakes and sweets. She has been hired specifically to be a voice for start ups and small firms.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said:
These appointments are about better involving businesses in government’s decision making process, so that we can support their growth in a more intelligent way.
I’ve already visited Lawrence’s company headquarters near Leeds and had exposure to his trenchant view on banks and of the high-performance cars that he manufactures. I will be visiting Rekha’s main retail outlet at Fortnum and Masons today.
Rekha and Lawrence will be important voices for businesses in my department. Having them on hand to offer feedback and advice will be a significant asset and help keep our focus firmly on the needs of entrepreneurs.
Serial Entrepreneur, Lawrence Tomlinson, who was awarded ‘Overall Director of the Year’ by the Institute of Directors in 2012 said:
I’m thrilled to be joining BIS and I’m eager to get straight to work and support the department’s efforts to address the issues businesses are facing on the ground.
My key focus in office will be to tackle some of the key concerns around access to finance and improving bank lending to business and I will share the views and experiences of my peers with Ministers and officials on this issue.
Start-up Entrepreneur Rekha Mehr said:
I am very excited to begin work as the new Start-up Entrepreneur in Residence. It’s easy to forget the early days and frustrations of starting your own business and I welcome the opportunity to share my experiences to help government improve their understanding of the needs of a start-up business.
There is a wealth of guidance and support available to SMEs which can be critical to their success in the early stages and I look forward to working with Ministers in the coming months to raise awareness of this and contribute to ideas for future initiatives.
Over 200 business owners across the country applied for the two available positions which were announced during last year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week.
Notes to editors
1.Pictures of the entrepreneurs meeting Business Secretary Vince Cable will be available on the BIS flickr channel from 4.30pm http://www.flickr.com/photos/bisgovuk
2.The entrepreneurs will be office holders (not employees) and will receive a £10,000 pa honorarium for one days work per week. The appointment will be in a personal capacity and will be made for one year.
3.Start-up Entrepreneur – Rekha Mehr
The founder and owner of a London-based business creating high-end Anglo-Indian cakes and sweets.
Rekha was a buyer with Waitrose and Amazon. In February 2012 she set up Pistachio Rose an Indian inspired bakery with products at Fortnum and Mason.
4.Serial Entrepreneur – Lawrence Tomlinson
A Leeds-based entrepreneur with experience in a range of sectors, his portfolio now being dominated by care homes and racing cars. He has had multiple awards. He is passionate about helping small firms and has experience of a variety of sectors including manufacturing and engineering and health services.
Lawrence bought a single care home from his parents in 1988 from which he developed Orchard Care Homes – a company he sold in 2007 for £180 million. Now founder and chair of LNT group with businesses across a range of sectors including; construction, software, chemicals, cars, and care homes. He has employee share ownership in all his firms. Recently awarded IoD ”Overall Director of the Year”. Ambassador of Prince’s Trust and supports disadvantaged people to make a start in business.
5.The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set four ambitions in the Plan for Growth’ (PDF 1.7MB), published at Budget 2011:
to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe.
Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.
Shree Maher Samaj Ahmadabad (Gujarat, India), provides an essential residential stay and food for Maher Samaj, who are travelling to Ahmadabad city for medical treatment. For a nominal fee of 20 Ruppees the centre provides meal and overnight stay.
Current facilities are out-dated and are in need of urgent repair. We need your help to raise funds of 5 lakh Rupees (£5700) for this centre.
Maher Centre Leicester has already raised around £2,000 from various events and donations from individuals. If you would like to make a donation for Maher Samaj Ahmadabad centre then please contact Mr Pratap Lakha Odedra (Leicester) on 07711603538 or email pratap.odedra@ntlworld.com
It is sad to announce that Valiben Jivabhai Savabhai Odedra from Leicester, UK (Fatana – India) has passed away. She passed away peacefully on Wednesday 28th November 2012, 5:05am at Glenfields Hospital, Leicester.
Sitting and Bhajan at Mr Balubhai Jivabhai Odedra’s resident at 5 The Approach, Leicester, LE5 5GE. Friday – Bhajan from 7:30pm, Saturday – Bhagvat Gita Paath from 8pm, Sunday – Bhajan from 7:30pm
Funeral has been arranged for Monday 3rd December 2012 at 9:30am from 5 The Approach, Leicester, LE5 5GE Tel: 0116 2733421 or 07985296314
Funeral ceremony will take place from 10:30am at:
Gilroes Cemetery and Crematorium
An Indian visa centre is to be opened – following a 20-year campaign by residents and politicians. The Indian High Commission has visa application offices in London and Birmingham.
Rekha and 
