New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- Prime Minister Keir Starmer's recent visit was aimed at giving impetus to economic ties with India even before the bilateral free trade agreement comes into force, resulting in fresh British investments of £3.6 billion into India, UK high commissioner Lindy Cameron said on Wednesday. Defence was another area of focus, with the £350-million deal for lightweight multirole missile (LMM) systems announced during Starmer's trip expected to lead to engagement with the Indian Army for "more complex weapons", Cameron said in an interview. Here are edited excerpts from the interview: There were £1.3 billion of Indian investments into the UK and £3.6 billion of UK investments into India - fresh investments since PM Narendra Modi's visit to the UK in July. This is following up on the trade deal and the unusual combination of two prime ministerial visits. PM Starmer came with a big business, sports and cultural delegation - the biggest we've brought to India ever. As PM Starmer said, let's get going now. You don't need to wait for the trade deal to come into force. British businesses see India as an opportunity, not just to expand in India, but to go global. And actually the Revolut story is a really interesting one. [UK's Revolut has plans to launch its payment platform in India as part of a global expansion]. There were over 10,000 jobs we created in the UK by the end of the visit. Don't ask me to bet on parliamentary processes, but I don't think we're expecting significant challenges. It's just there's a process that has to be completed. It's a tricky year, whether it's the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, clearly a more turbulent economic year globally. But there's a sense these are two democracies, both with governments elected last year for a five-year term, and therefore there's a sense of predictability in the relationship. From our side, it's about British business understanding India's potential and wanting to be part of that growth story. We have a massive interest in India being the biggest, best version of itself and of being part of that journey. In the summer we signed the Vision 2035 that has five pillars, including defence and technology. In technology, we established the UK-India Connectivity and Innovation Centre, a joint hub focused on developing an AI native network for 6G. We established the India-UK Joint Centre for AI for advancing trustworthy AI across health, climate, fintech and engineering biology. Then, we established the UK India Critical Minerals Processing and Downstream Collaboration Guild, [which signals] a shared interest in a more stable supply chain, thinking about things like recycling and processing. The other interesting thing was the critical minerals observatory, which is the first joint programme between Oxford and Indian universities to map where critical minerals supply chains come from. That's the first of its kind in the world. In parallel with the PMs speaking at the Global FinTech Fest in Mumbai, we had the Indian aircraft carrier and the UK carrier exercising in Operation Konkan off the coast. We've done a number of things before, but this was a different scale of exercise. We had the LMM deal that guaranteed 700 jobs in Belfast, and we see that as the precursor to a longer term engagement with the Indian Army on more complex weapons. We signed the implementing arrangement to advance defence and industrial collaboration on electric powered [naval] engines. I think there's a real opportunity on the jet engine collaboration as well - we are clear that we think that would be a really exciting potential partnership. The numbers are extraordinary. In the next decade, India needs 70 million graduates, of whom the system currently supports about 40 million. There is a huge demand and we have a lot of universities that have fantastic experiences with Indian students already, and see the potential to bring brilliant university education to India. India's new education policy, which is rather groundbreaking, allowed universities to set up campuses here and really unlocked that potential. There's also potential for more collaboration on things like research and innovation....