The Hindu Business Line : Brand India takes the global stage

In this article that looks forward, I will share a personal story — of how I spent most of this past year and the lessons I learnt from it. The story is not a self-promo as it may appear to be; rather a a case study that shouts out, “If I can do it, anyone can.”

I received a call one day exactly a year ago from Wiley International – a 100-year-old publishing house – asking if I would be willing to author a book for their Dummies series. They had just decided to do a ‘Doing Business in Country’ series and were looking for an author in India and China as the first two countries to write about.

It was with equal parts of excitement and intimidation that I agreed to take up this project – saying that if others could do it, so could I. The money wasn’t significant, but the opportunity was! Wiley said they chose me because I had, over the past 12 years, worked with multinational corporations as diverse as Ford, Hyundai, Fidelity and Nokia – right from inception when they were thinking of setting up business in India, to achieving leadership in the process of initially moving expatriates, who were responsible for the knowledge transfer, right up to handing over the reins to an Indian leader from their group.

We at Global Adjustments Relocation and Cross-cultural Services gave these multinationals practical logistical help and end-to-end services, helping them in settling down in the five big cities in India where we have offices. And, during the past decade, we have worked with over 70 different nationalities.

So I set off on a journey of discovery and learning. Magically, help was always at hand – whether it was interviewing present and past clients on aspects as varied as manufacturing, retail, tax and business plans or adding my own core area of the etiquette of doing business with Indians. And, to my amazement we filled up a 350-page book of 22 chapters, targeted at newcomers wishing to do business in India.

The questions and answers from a network of people who researched and responded and my own training by Wiley in ‘dummification’ of the content took 10 months of 16-hour work-days. Hard work didn’t kill me – only taught me to focus. And once you take out the “what’s in it for me” ringtone, fun automatically follows.

The author review phase was the most enjoyable as I sat hammering away at my computer in San Francisco for several weeks, taking frequent walks at Golden Gate Park for inspiration and responding to apparently obvious facts that I had assumed my readers would understand. Here are a couple of examples:

Nokia had to Indianise its product and add torchlights to its cellphones for truck drivers using them on highways, I wrote. Pat came the question: “What is a torchlight? Is it a backlit screen or some other kind of light?” (We refer to it as torchlight while Americans call it flashlights.)

Or – “So you explained the caste system, but do people of all castes hang out in the same bars?” (I had to explain that hanging out in bars wasn’t a common phenomenon in the vast majority of India and people who did, did not differentiate by caste. )

Similarly, many questions were eye-openers to me as much as to my American editorial team — what the world knows of us and what we think they do, are a bag of surprises.

Today, the book is on the shelves across the US, Europe, Asia and India – 3,500 copies have been sold in three months in the US alone – the India interest is steadily growing.

I launched the book at the Employee Relocation Conference and honoured people from my industry of relocation and mobility with silk stoles from India. And suddenly I rediscovered to my delight how much India is respected.

A clear repetitive pattern has emerged in my recent interactions, which new managers can use to their advantage and will help boost our self-esteem as we work in a world flattened by globalisation.

Indian economic growth and our mastering of what Prof Amartya Sen calls “the twin languages of digits and English” have stood us in good stead. People are tripping over themselves to do business with us. Let us work hard and smart to keep it up.

Our tradition, culture and spirituality together with our material success is a felt need for the progress of the world’s nations. As author Edward Luce says: “Without India, the world is doomed to the poverty of materialism.” Let’s strengthen our inner core.

Gandhi is loved and respected world over. As his secretary, Kalyan, said: “We should take him out of our dusty glass cases and share him with the world, he was born in India but belongs to the world.” I have often used his quotes to everyone’s delight in world audiences. Let us know our own leaders better.

People out there actually like us. A collaborative Chindia is poised to uplift the world. Even the Chinese may not have the negativity we perceive – I heard one say, “We are thankful to India for giving us the Buddha!” Let’s forge partnerships.

The world is waiting – globalindians just have to take advantage of it and carry along, each in our own capacity, some of rural India with us, on this curve to betterment.

See you in a happy 2008 Global Indians!

(The writer is CEO of Global Adjustments, a relocation and cross-cultural services company, and is also the author of Doing Business in India for Dummies. Contact: globalindian@globaladjustments.com)

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