A white stacked tiffin lunchbox with gold bands on a deep kumkum red tile, with a dashed line running from it to a red London roundel

The Mumbai and London leg of My Most Trusted,
a national and global super-community of

trusted connections in our Trusted Universe, September 2026

Mumbai · London

The Mumbai-London Business Bridge

the dabbawalas. Mumbai's lunchbox carriers. Every working day they collect home cooked lunches from kitchens across the city and deliver each one to the right desk, passing it from hand to hand along the way.

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What this is

The Mumbai-London Business Bridge is for Mumbai businesses that want London clients, partners or a first office, and for London firms that want to work with Mumbai without starting from a cold list.

The flight is about nine hours and the working days overlap every afternoon in Mumbai, which is morning in London. Distance is not what stops most of these deals. What stops them is that nobody on either side knows who to trust on the other, so good firms send polite emails into silence.

A person at each end of the route

Mumbai moves fast and builds on relationships. London moves carefully and checks references. Each end of this Bridge has its own person who lives there and understands how their side decides.

MumbaiMumbai

Burhanuddin Patanwala

Host, Mumbai · Fortitude Law Associates

Burhanuddin Patanwala holds the Mumbai end of the Bridge. He is a law graduate with a BBA LLB, the Indian five year business and law degree and the equivalent of a JD, and works as an associate at Fortitude Law Associates, which is affiliated with Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. He is building his circle the way this network asks everyone to, one person he can vouch for at a time. He meets people on Zoom, and in person around Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. Nothing he says as a host of this Bridge is legal advice, and introductions made here are introductions, not instructions to act for anyone.

More about Burhanuddin

Londonseat open

This seat is open

The founding London host seat is open. One Londoner will hold this end. Someone London already trusts, who wants to choose the first members on their side personally and walk them across to Mumbai.

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How an introduction travels

Hand to hand, never broadcast.A person who knows you both writes to you both, with a reason. If there is no good reason, there is no introduction.
No lists, no sequences.Nobody buys your details and nobody pitches you on arrival. You only hear from people someone vouched for.
Your circle stays yours.Your profile and the people who trust you stay with you, whichever club you met them through.
Afternoon in Mumbai, morning in London.Most introductions start on a video call in the overlap. A flight is for when it is already worth it.
You join by referral.The point is not to be the biggest network in either country. It is to be a room where everyone in it can be vouched for by somebody already inside it.

Worth a read

Read How a Mumbai business finds London clients and partners without a contact there

A plain guide for Mumbai business owners who want London clients, partners or a first office. Why cold approaches to UK firms rarely get answered, what a London buyer checks before saying yes to an Indian partner, and why one trusted introduction does more than a hundred emails.

Ask about joining

Mumbai's dabbawalas have carried lunches across the city for more than a century, and a tin almost never goes to the wrong desk. There is no app behind it. Each tin passes through several pairs of hands, and each person knows the stretch of the route before and after their own. That is how an introduction should travel too: from one person who knows you to the next person who knows them, until it arrives where it was meant to go.

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