NEW DELHI: A special 400-seater Air India flight from Cairo touched down in Mumbai on Monday afternoon, but with 80 empty seats even as many stranded Indians struggled to get to Cairo Airport in the wake of large-scale political unrest in the country. There are about 3,600 Indians in Egypt, many of them employed with over 50 Indian companies that have operations there.

Getting their employees back home is the first of India Inc’s many concerns as citizens took to the streets bringing the government in Egypt to a grinding halt. Next on India Inc’s priority list is to cope with likely dip in revenues and profitability from fledgling businesses in the region and to reassess the viability of a few more billions of dollars of proposed investments, if the unrest continues to cripple the nation.

India has invested over $2 billion in Egypt, and a few big investments like a $3.4-billion oil refinery proposal by the Essar group are being considered. Trade between India and Egypt had peaked at $3.82 billion in 2008-09, but slipped to $3.1 billion the next year.

Wipro, Marico, and Chemplast Sanmar, among others, have now shut their operations in Egypt as a precautionary measure.

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