Last month’s terrorist attacks in the western Indian city of Mumbai won’t derail Georgia’s plans to grow its business ties with the country, state officials and business leaders told GlobalAtlanta.

As Americans celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, 10 assailants armed with machine guns and grenades launched a three-day siege of targets in the coastal city, killing more than 170 and injuring many more.

Just weeks earlier, on Nov. 1, Delta Air Lines Inc. started its first nonstop Atlanta-Mumbai flight. 

On board were state officials and business leaders looking to maintain relationships and drum up new economic activity for Georgia in the nation of more than a billion people.

Mumbai, an important commercial and entertainment center with a population of 13 million, was a centerpiece of Georgia’s second official trade mission to India in three years.

Ken Stewart, the state’s economic development commissioner, said he met with founder- and CEO-level officials from some of India’s top companies to try to attract investment and create jobs in Georgia.

Asked whether the attacks would deter further interaction, he said, “The answer is no.  Our long-term plans remain the same.  We’ve got a good relationship with India and with Indian companies and we look forward to a long-lasting relationship with them as they work through their problems.”

Indian companies are investing overseas more heavily than ever, and the state sees potential in the entertainment, automotive manufacturing and technology sectors, Mr. Stewart told GlobalAtlanta.

The flight and the trip signify a growing trend toward Georgia-India cooperation that seemed to accelerate just before the attacks.

The Georgia ports sent 251.4 percent more containers to India in fiscal year 2008 ended June 30, making it the ports’ fastest growing export market by container traffic.

In October, Indian Ambassador Ronan Sen said in Atlanta that an Indian consulate would open here by the end of next year.

That same week, Indu Shahani, the honorary sheriff of Mumbai, visited Atlanta with an education delegation.

More than 70,000 Indians live in the metro Atlanta area, said Narsi Narasimhan, president of the Georgia Indo-American Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Narasimhan traveled on the Georgia mission.  He said the delegation ate lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which was later ransacked by the terrorists, who were said to have targeted Western travelers.

He said the heinous acts would cause an increase in security costs, but businesspeople wouldn’t lose interest in India.

“In the long run, sure the cost will go up, but the commitment also goes up.  We want to fight back.  We can’t let terrorists dictate our life,” said Mr. Narasimhan, a native of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Atlanta businessman Ani Agnihotri wasn’t far removed from the attacks.  He stayed in the Taj Hotel Nov. 2-5 and was back in Mumbai Nov. 10-13 after  traveling to other Indian cities.   During the siege, his sister-in-law narrowly escaped the Oberoi Trident Hotel, another establishment overtaken by attackers.

The New Delhi-born director of the Atlanta-based U.S.-India Business and Research Council said that terrorism isn’t new to India.

But both he and Mr. Narasimhan believed this was different from previous incidents.  The “long, agonizing siege” will remain imprinted in the psyche of Indians like the 9/11 attacks for Americans, Mr. Agnihotri said.

“There have been attacks in Mumbai in 1993 and 2006,” he said. “This one was most heinous of them as people were shot in cold blood irrespective of their age, nationality or ethnicity or religion.”

Despite the gravity of the crimes and the ensuing fallout from Indians looking for accountability from their government, Mr. Agnihotri believes that business will plow on.

“From a business perspective the incident will amount only to a blip – if at all. There will only be a temporary effect.”

Delta Air Lines saw direct short-term setbacks from the attacks.  The carrier evacuated its personnel and suspended the new flight for three days, said spokeswoman Susan Chana Elliott.

The cancellation directly affected travelers like Jagdish Sheth, a marketing professor in Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. 

Dr. Sheth said Delta left a recorded voicemail message about the cancellation.

He had to change his schedule and buy a new ticket to fly Lufthansa through Germany to Mumbai, he told GlobalAtlanta in an e-mail from India.

In the long run, Dr. Sheth said, Delta’s ability to market the flight won’t be significantly hampered.

“Despite the terrorism attack, the whole world is still very much interested in participating in the growth of the Indian economy.  For example, I'm in Delhi now and I saw a large number of  Japanese and Korean executives, mostly here to do business,” he said in an e-mail sent Dec. 3.

He said that Delta could counteract negative press by launching an e-mail campaign to provide information to business customers.  It would also help if the airline met with its key corporate customers to debrief them on the situation, “preferably on a one-on-one basis,” he said.

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