வெற்றிபோடும் இந்தியர்கள்

[விஜயராகவன்]

பெரிய சர்வதேச வாணிக நிருவனங்களில் அமெரிக்கர்களுக்கு அடுத்தபடி
இந்தியர்கள்தாமாம். இந்தியாவின் பல மொழிகள் பேசும் பிரதேசங்கள், நல்ல
கல்விநிலையங்கள், ஆங்கில சரளத்துவம், போட்டிமிக்க பொருளாதாரம் ஆகியவை
சர்வதேச நிருவனங்களின் உயரதிகாரித்துவ தன்மைகளை வளர்க்கின்றன. டைம் படி

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2084441,00.html


What on earth did the Banga brothers' mother feed them for breakfast?
Whatever it was, it worked: Vindi Banga grew up to become a top
executive at the food and personal-care giant Unilever, then a partner
at the private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. His younger
brother Ajay, after heading Citigroup's Asian operations, was last
year named CEO of MasterCard — all without a degree from a Western
business school and without abandoning his Sikh turban. When Ajay took
over at the credit-card company's suburban — New York City
headquarters, the Times of India crowed that he was the first
"entirely India-minted executive" at a multinational's helm.

The brothers laugh when asked for their mother's breakfast menu,
deflecting suggestions that they were raised by a Bengal-tiger mom.
Instead, they cite an itinerant childhood as a key ingredient in their
success. The sons of a lieutenant general in the Indian army, they
moved to a new posting every couple of years — perfect training, it
turns out, for global executives facing new markets and uncertain
conditions. "You had to adapt to new friends, new places," recalls
Vindi. "You had to create your ecosystem wherever you went."
(See pictures of the tempestuous Nehru Dynasty of India.)

The Banga brothers are two of a growing roster of global Indian
business leaders, a roster that includes CEOs such as Citigroup's
Vikram Pandit and PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi as well as the deans of both
Harvard Business School and INSEAD. Yes, ArcelorMittal's Lakshmi
Mittal had the advantage of growing up in the family business, but now
the family business has grown into a global powerhouse under his
leadership.

What factors account for the rise and rise of India-trained business
minds? "Our colleagues in our Asian offices are asking the same
question," laughs Jill Ader, head of CEO succession at the executive-
search firm Egon Zehnder International. "Their clients in China and
Southeast Asia are saying, 'How come it's the Indians getting all the
top jobs?'" It could be because today's generation of Indian managers
grew up in a country that provided them with the experience so
critical for today's global boss. Multiculturalism? Check. Complex
competitive environment? Check. Resource-constrained developing
economy? You got that right. And they grew up speaking English, the
global business language.

It's risky to generalize about India, a subcontinent of 1.2 billion
people, just as it's simplistic to stereotype the Western executive or
the Chinese business leader. Motorola's Sanjay Jha or Berkshire
Hathaway's Ajit Jain, one of those tipped as Warren Buffett's
successor, succeed due to talent and drive, not because they're
Indian. And bosses like Nooyi spend most of their formative career
years outside the country. Is it that they may just happen to be
Indian? As Ajay Banga notes, "You are who you are because of what you
do, not the color of your skin."
(See "India vs. China: Whose Economy Is Better?")

The data suggest Indians are scaling corporate heights. In a study of
S&P 500 companies, Egon Zehnder found more Indian CEOs than any other
nationality except American. Indians lead seven companies; Canadians,
four. Among the C-suite executives in the 2009 FORTUNE 500 were two
mainland Chinese, two North American Chinese and 13 Indians, according
to a study by two professors from Wharton and China Europe
International Business School.

For multinationals, it makes good sense to have leaders experienced in
working with expanding Asian markets. And India is already the
location of many of their operations. "If you look at companies like
Pepsi or Hewlett-Packard or IBM, a huge chunk of their global
workforce is sitting out in India," says Anshuman Das, a co-founder of
CareerNet, a Bangalore executive-search company. "India and China are
also the countries of future profits for the multinationals, so they
may want their global leaders to come out of them."

Competitive and complex, India has evolved from a poorly run,
centrally controlled economy into the perfect petri dish in which to
grow a 21st century CEO. "The Indians are the friendly and familiar
faces of Asia," says Ader. "They think in English, they're used to
multinationals in their country, they're very adaptive, and they're
supremely confident." The subcontinent has been global for centuries,
having endured, and absorbed, waves of foreign colonizers, from the
Mughals to the British. Practiced traders and migrants, Indians have
impressive transnational networks. "The earth is full of Indians,"
wrote Salman Rushdie. "We get everywhere." Unlike, say, a Swede or a
German, an Indian executive is raised in a multiethnic, multifaith,
multilingual society, one nearly as diverse as the modern global
marketplace.
(See pictures of India's "slumdog" entrepreneurs.)

Unlike Americans, they're well versed in negotiating India's byzantine
bureaucracy, a key skill to have in emerging markets. And unlike the
Chinese, they can handle the messiness of a litigious democracy. "In
China, you want something done, you talk to a bureaucrat and a
politician — it gets done," observes Ajay. "In India, if you talk to a
bureaucrat or a politician, there are going to be 600 other people
with their own points of view." There's an old saw about Asian
business cultures: "The Chinese roll out the red carpet; Indians roll
out the red tape."

Maybe that's why Indian managers are good at managing it. They have
cut their teeth in a country ranked 134th by the World Bank for ease
of doing business. To be fair, it's also the reason some of them left
home. They're practiced in the exasperating culture of local, state
and national permits. "To build a factory in China, a CEO will have to
get two or three different permissions from various departments,"
observes Signe Spencer, a co-author of The Indian CEO, a 2007 study
from the HayGroup consultancy. "An Indian CEO may have to get 80
different permissions from 80 different places." No wonder Indian
executives spend much of their time networking and lobbying — tasks
Western CEOs leave to their corporate public-affairs departments.

India's economic liberalization, which began in 1991, was another
blessing for this generation of executives. It gave them exposure to a
young and fast-growing consumer market. "Liberalization unleashed a
level of competition that makes you stand on your toes," recalls
Vindi. "We had to learn to compete with international players but also
with very good, extremely fast local ones." In 1987, when Vindi was
CEO of Hindustan Unilever, the company's leading detergent, Surf,
faced off against Nirma, a locally produced brand. "It didn't cost 5%
less, or 10% less," says Vindi, shaking his head. "It cost a third of
our product. We had to make a product that was better, for the same
price." Within 12 months, they had



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