Five years ago, anyone suggesting that The Times of India, the world’s largest circulation English-language newspaper, could buy the Financial Times, arguably the world’s most prestigious business paper, would have been laughed out of the room.

This month, despite the Indian media group’s insistence that it is focused solely on a booming domestic market, the rumour was taken very seriously in private equity circles.

“Confidence is an enormous thing,” said Toby Greenbury, co-head of the India practice at Mishcon de Reya and a director of the Indo-British Partnership. “Some businesses in India are growing very fast and they are using the money to become international companies.”

Above everything, they believe the global stage is their “rightful” place, according to Sonjoy Chatterjee, ICICI bank’s UK chief executive. “Corporate India is really thinking big,” he said. “It has seen what is available globally and is no longer nervous.”

Tata Motors, India’s largest car-maker, is believed to be lining up a bid for Land Rover, exemplifying the ambitions of corporate India. Inherently conservative after years of socialist containment, Indian companies are developing a propensity for risk. They are profitable, underleveraged and being offered access to debt by international banks, which are convinced of their long-term worth.

They are no longer content being commodity players; they want the premium end too. If the first step in globalisation was for cost-conscious Western brand owners to move their production east, the next stage appears to involve in-sourcing the outsourcer.

You don’t get more English than Wimbledon but this year there was a hidden Indian influence in SW19: the famous green and purple towels so treasured by men’s champion Roger Federer that he gives them to friends as Christmas presents.

Few outside the textiles industry noticed last year’s £15 million acquisition by Welspun, India’s largest exporter of terry towels, of Christy, the 150-year-old brand beloved of Queen Victoria and a former pillar of the Courtaulds Group.

But the deal underlined a growing confidence among Indian suppliers to put themselves in the global shop window after years of being the back-office boys.

Welspun is using Christy – the largest terry towel supplier to Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Bloomingdale’s and Debenhams – to gain access to new markets.

Christy, now an Indian subsidiary, is relocating its sole UK manufacturing facility from the North West of England to northwestern India. Welspun’s mill in Anjar, Gujarat, with capacity to make 5.6 million towels a year at a quarter of the cost of the developed world, will be fully operational by September.

With the death of Britain’s textiles industry long declared, it is an inevitable shift and is indicative of India’s new position in the world order.

“Many British people still think India’s a place for low-cost labour and call centres but the Indians own call centres in the UK now,” Peter Luff, the Tory MP for Mid-Worcestershire and chairman of the Trade and Industry Select Committee, said.

The next five to ten years will only see corporate India gaining in confidence. British companies will attract more interest from Indian groups hoping to apply their back-end scale and access to Asian markets to a world-famous brand with access to Western markets. “Indian companies already have the manufacturing facilities but they need the front and the visibility,” said Ramesh Ahuja, chief executive of SBI Capital Markets, the State Bank of India’s corporate finance arm in London. “That’s why Tata bought Tetley. Because they thought they could add value. And there’s no stopping this for the simple reason that there are a lot of synergies between Indian companies and UK companies.”

There are significant hurdles ahead, though, not least a danger that India could start believing its own hype.

Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT services company, is still only 5 per cent of the size of IBM, the world leader. ICICI bank, India’s largest commercial bank with a market capitalisation of $25 billion (£12.1 billion), is only one tenth the size of Citibank. China has five banks in the top 50 global list while India has none.

“In almost all cases, Indian businesses have a long way to go to challenge the global majors,” said Alan Rosling, the Tata director responsible for the Indian group’s international strategy. “Western and Japanese companies enjoy advantages beyond scale, including superior brands, technologies and competences, and forward-thinking multinationals are turning to India to exploit the same cost and people advantages that underpin the competitive challenge of Indian companies.”

Turning Bombay into a global financial centre so it can interact properly with London and facilitate trade flows is another huge challenge. The pace of reform by India’s central bank is slow.

Meanwhile, Bombay is losing out to other emerging financial centres such as Dubai, and some Indian banks abroad continue to be focused solely on the $30 billion global remittance market, rather than becoming serious corporate financers.

“All the Indian banks have operations in London but [corporate financing] has been the preserve of foreign banks with the large balance sheets offshore. It is hard for players out of India,” said Naina Lal Kidwai, chief executive of HSBC India.

Immigration concerns in the wake of the failed UK terror attacks, for which three of the suspects include Indian nationals, may also slow India’s march on Britain. Students, in particular, may find it more difficult to get visas in the coming months. It will not, however, be a deal-breaker.

“The debate will die down because you will just not have enough skilled people [in the UK]. The estimate is that by 2020 the developed world will fall short of 40 million people of working age,” said Sunil Kant Munjal, chairman of Hero Corporate Services, an arm of India’s $3.2 billion Hero Group.

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