This weekend just past India marked its independence and I returned from a soggy Mumbai for a second time in a month. It’s monsoon in Mumbai and it’s a very rainy place to be. And this time, I’m hot on the heels of the visit of David Cameron and the senior echelons of his government who had spent three days banging the British drum and trying to foster greater trade and investment between the two countries.

It’s a sobering observation that Britain sells more to Ireland than India, in fact by some considerable margin. To put it in perspective, as a country we sell more to Ireland than China, India, Russia and Brazil combined! That’s not the case of the formidable German economy which appears to be powering away off the back of car and engineering exports to the hungry Asian economies, as well as Latin America.

So, David Cameron’s early jaunt to India is no doubt the right thing. I question nowadays, however, whether trade missions are not rather dated affairs but the intention is good and I can not agree with him more that India is a very smart country with which to be building a partnership. But the lesson for me from my latest visit is you can’t be complacent about claims of a longstanding relationship between the two countries. As true as that might be, there’s little sentimentalism in India, just raw commercial appetite – and British investors should not have any pre-conceived ideas about being a preferred partner to do business with. It was revealing that while Cameron’s visit to India received significant coverage in the UK, it had far less prominence in India where there is nowadays a revolving door of world leaders and trade delegations passing through. In November it’s the turn of President Obama, while President Sarkozy arrives in December.

I don’t expect Cameron’s trade mission, then, will have firmly delivered. My overwhelming impression of India, and especially the team we have partnered with at Good Relations India, is of an exceptionally smart, young and very commercial.

So let’s take those three areas in turn:

Education. India's higher education system is the third largest in the world, after China and the United States. It has around 350 universities, some of which include a number of institutes of technology which are now recognised to be world-class institutions. Yes, there is still an issue with the provision of education across the country, but education is an area in which India, with its focus on science and engineering, is truly pioneering and now producing some of the best brains in the world.

Demographics. Over the next 40 years, Europe will see its working-age population shrink by around 37 million. That’s a truly colossal figure. But I was even more struck on my flight back from India to read that by 2050 China will have 100 million fewer workers than it does today. India’s population, on the other hand, will grow by 300 million working-age persons. That’s a truly astonishing advantage for China’s biggest challenger among emerging nations. According to Goldman Sachs, if India goes further in opening up its markets and invests further in training and education, those kind of demographics could add a further four percentage points a year to economic growth. That brings me to my third impression…

Commercial. Indian businesses, and business leaders, are exceptionally savvy. And the reason they have invested so heavily in the UK, for example, is not because they think they are reliable businesses and it’s a safe place to operate. They’re smart and have excelled in buying businesses, often poor performing, and have turned them around. Take a look at Tata’s UK investment – Corus, Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley. None of those businesses could have been marked as truly great British businesses – may be once great British brands in the case of Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley but they had been allowed to wither. It’s now the charge of the Indian light brigade which is shaking up some parts of the UK’s manufacturing base and appears to be succeeding.

So with all that in mind, plus the fact that Goldman Sachs is now predicting it will outpace China next year in economic growth, it seems a logical conclusion that we as a branding agency should be there.

I can’t wait til I get back for some more monsoon!