A NORTH Yorkshire company is helping India’s accelerating demand for business leadership – and bracing itself for its own boom in the process.

Primeast, the 24-year-old Harrogate management company, which has 140 consultants in 40 countries, is partnering an Indian organisation to build and operate a “leadership centre” in the hills near Puna.

It is joining forces with Indian human resources guru Venkatesh Desai to fuse the best leadership skills of both east and west to help cope with an Indian economy whose annual growth is forging ahead at six per cent.

Gary Edwards, Primeast’s finance director, believes that within two years the Indian operation could generate a turnover equal to the annual £1.5 million-worth of sales in Harrogate.

He said: “Plans are in for a 40-bedroom residential centre. The first spade will hit the ground in October, in time for a grand opening in October 2012.

“The opportunity for growth is amazing. Usually employees are still in their 20s, watching and learning to be managers and supervisors.

“Out there growth is so fast that there is a need to promote people to supervisors and team managers within a year.”

He said that geographically the centre would also be well-placed to help aspiring young business people in the Middle East, which was only a three-hour flight away, as well as Bangkok and Singapore “so that soon it can become an international centre”.

Primeast has organised workshops in Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, Mozambique, Jordan and Mauritius through the British Council.

These are not only attended by students but also entrepreneurs and managers, all keen to learn how to recognise talents then harness them.

Founded by John Campbell, now chairman, Primeast was led by Clive Wilson, a dynamic Business Personality Of The Year finalist in 2008’s Press Business Awards. He is now deputy chairman, having handed over the managing director reins to Russell Evans.

Between them they have continued to lead what they call the “talent liberation movement”. They rebelled against the way that some companies treated staff as commodities, measuring their skills with “competency frameworks” that created a “square pegs for round holes” policy.

Exceptional talents and strengths were ignored in order to fit people into a framework.

It was Mr Wilson who coined the phrase “talent liberation”, proving that organisations reached prime performance when they recognised, valued, developed and used all the staff’s unique talents to achieve objectives.