A group gathered at the Olympia Prime Restaurant.

The Georgia Indo-American Chamber of Commerce’s officers for 2008 have pledged to increase dramatically the chamber’s membership through an aggressive outreach as the state’s trade with India is expected to grow substantially.

Narsi Narasimhan, the CEO and co-founder of the software service company, Palaam Inc., and the new chamber president, told GlobalAtlanta that he wants to see the chamber membership grow four times from its present size to include some 800 members.

“Trade with India is only going to grow and we want to be a catalyst,” he said. “We want to build on our foundation by having an important membership drive and involving our members in different committees."

Committees have been formed, he added, to promote trade, education, use of the Web and Internet, public relations, government and chamber liaisons and, most importantly, membership.

The new officers were announced at a reception in the Georgia-Pacific Building’s Olympia Prime Restaurant on Feb. 13, which drew some 50 members of the chamber for a “meet-and-greet” session with media representatives.

Besides Dr. Narasimhan, the new officers are Ritesh Desai, vice president, Eshco International Inc., president-elect; Neera Bahl, an attorney with Dixit & Youn LLP, secretary and Nick Damani, chairman of the board, Ultra Group of Cos., treasurer.

Other board members and their companies are Kirtan Patel, KPPB LLC; Aravind Goli, IT Solutions Inc.; Ash Thakker, Global Technology Connection Inc.; David Gault, Direct Resource Group; Ila Gandhi, The Learning Point; P.R. Subramanian, NIIT (USA) Inc.; Shaker Reddy, Accura Support Services Ltd.; Shweta Kohli, Haven Trust Bank; Stan Sthanunathan, Coca-Cola Co.; Teri Simmons, Arnall, Golden & Gregory LLP and Vicki Flier Hudson, Highroad Presentations Inc.