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2 India, the new land of
opportunity By Indrajit Basu
KOLKATA - It is not unusual to find
foreigners crowding Delhi's tourist spots on a
typical winter morning during the year-end
vacation days. But foreigners on a Christmas-New
Year holiday thronging a recruiter's office in the
central business district in Delhi? Ask Uday
Chawla, the India-based managing partner of the
global executive search firm Transearch, and he
will tell you that the holiday week this December
was his busiest.
"We were flooded with
queries and meetings during the holidays,"
he
said. "This season, we received a record number of
inquiries from expatriate professionals, including
those of Indian origin exploring opportunities in
India while on a vacation."
According to
Chawla, with India proving to be one of greatest
economic stories of the world today, the country
has not only emerged as an important destination
for doing business for global corporations, but
expatriate professionals from around the world are
increasingly flocking to India in pursuit of
gaining experience here instead of working in more
developed countries.
Chawla said that
until recently, he had to use a considerable
amount of his networking skills to persuade
expatriates to take up assignments in India. "But
with the country's impressive economic growth and
investments pouring in from almost all the
Fortune-listed top companies, expatriate
professionals from across industries in developed
countries like [those in North America and Europe]
and even Asian countries like Japan and [South]
Korea have started turning to us on their own
these days."
To many, even the perceived
hardship of living in India is hardly a deterrent.
India has emerged as a land of opportunities and
an imperative for climbing up the corporate
hierarchy.
Crafting the future of
global business Indeed, working in India
has gone beyond being just a fad as it used to be;
it has now become strategic for everyone. "That's
where the growth lies for the long term," said
Delhi-based Amitabh Sharma, a consultant at the
global search firm Egon Zhender that claims
typically to "accept mandates at the critical
leadership level".
There are two basic
reasons behind this surge. First, India is gaining
credibility as a nation that is developing very
quickly and is not seen as a hardship posting
anymore. Second, companies in India are
increasingly willing and able to pay the salaries
these expats are looking for. "Let's face it,"
said Sharma, "whatever opportunities a country may
provide, few expat professionals worth [their]
salt will accept a salary cut."
But
according to Sharma, there's another important
factor that makes India very attractive; the
country is also siring the new business models in
the globalizing economy. "The models for the
future for many industries [such as information
technology, telecom, airlines, steel, automobiles,
and many more] are being built in countries like
India and China."
For these sectors, the
West is now a mature market, where growth is not
only stagnating, but the markets may also be fast
heading toward saturation. In contrast, the
challenges in, for instance, the telecom and
aviation markets in India are not much about how
much new businesses companies can grab, but it is
more a question of how companies can handle growth
and competition in such dynamic circumstances.
"Consider the high-tech industries," said
Sharma. "It took 15 years for these industries to
attain maturity, but in India it will happen in
just six years. There are very few companies in
the West that operate at the kind of growth rate
that is represented in India and China. There are
also very few countries that have the kind of
potential in terms of number that India and China
offer."
Expats now a must But
just as work experience in India is important for
expat professionals seeking a career in the global
environment, expatriates have become critical for
India as well.
"As the Indian market is
emerging and developing, a lot of international
companies have started outsourcing and setting up
international operations in the country," said
Timothy Bond, a consultant with London-based
recruitment firm Launch Offshore, which
specializes in placing foreign nationals from
Europe and North America in India.
"So
naturally by default a lot of knowledge that has
existed in the United Kingdom and United States
have to be transitioned into
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