Just sitting in the Lobby of the comfortable Taj Landsend Hotel in Bandra, a quite cool area of Maximum City Bombay and finished with a compelling session of INSEAD, a business school. Like last year in November, I was invited to speak about “Entrepreneurship in India” and give the participants, all active managers from Denmark, feedback to their business-ideas which would capitalize in one way or another on India: as a manufacturing ground, for a global delivery, taking advantage of the labor arbitrage, as sales destination or as a domestic market of its own. All the fellows were very engaged, many of them for the first time inIndia and I could see in them in restrospective my own mixed emotions when I came here for the first time.
Here a small get-together with the two INSEAD-Professors Jonathan Story (left) and Christoph Zott (right) over a well deserved beer after the event:
Speaking about the differences in doing business, I pointed at the inverse ratio for cost of labor to cost of capital compared to the west. As labor is comparatively cheap in India, I realized that executives are by far not that efficiently organized in India like in e.g. Germany. Bluntly said: For that, in India they just hire another 30 people to get the work done. In India you are who you know. So building and maintaining your personal relationships is much more of the essence than anything else, an activity which usually does not succumb to the rules of economic efficiency. Therefore, making yourself constantly available on the phone, even in meetings, never showing any signs of disturbance when you get a call from a trusted friend in your network, is much more important than anything else. Something which is totally impossible in Germany where you go through secretaries to schedule a con-call etc. Conversely, I look with a bit of pride on the good people which I have gotten to know over the years, where I know that I can call anytime and will be welcomed warmly. This is one of the many great stories India has to tell every day.
Feeds
Just to play devil’s advocate (I am born an bred Asian…), it seems all cool that we (Asians) do business based on relationships. People go around impressing others by being able to say “I am friends with so and so, I know so and so…I am in bed with so and so”.
In Asia a nobody can be somebody simply because they network hard… but at the end, it is only a testimony of inefficiency and ‘how to keep the lower class’ at the bottom (at its best).
While it is impersonal to make an appointment via a secretary, it is also better, as the big boys making big cash should be focussing on generating value right? Plus the secretary doesn’t know the social status of some people.
But then again, when in Rome … Although it is still arguable if having so many relationships with so many people help towards greater efficiency (as opposed to fattening up of the selective (few) pockets), time will tell?
Devil’s advocate kiss.