Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"In India the war was fought by proxy between the French and British East India Companies. . . . British policy received fresh impetus in the 1750s when Robert Clive, who had been in India in the service of the East India Company since 1743, pushed himself into the front ranks, combining political manipulation of the viceroys of the Mughal emperor with military action to browbeat them into submission. . . . The decisive battle here was at Wandiwash near Pondicherry in January 1760, when de Lally was defeated by a British force led by Sir Eyre Coote. Pondicherry itself fell a year later after an eight-month siege, Lally’s capitulation marking an end to French hopes of dominating the subcontinent." [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 585-6]