Today was the second day of lectures at Xime University and we had three useful talks about Business Process Outsourcing in India, Indian Culture & Society and finally Succeeding In Working With Business Partners In India. The lectures were rich in a lot of interesting information.
The first talk, “Business Process Outsourcing in India” by Mr. Ashwin Hoskote Sr. the vice president in Global Business Excellence- Hinduja Global Solutions, involved many important points like the definition of outsourcing as “delegation of one or more parts of the job to external provider” and thus outsourcing may be in the same country or different one. Mr. Ashwin enumerated many countries that are involved in outsourcing and offshoring to the US like Jamaica, Portrico, and Canada which are considered near off shoring due to their near position from the US. India is one of the countries that is greatly involved and benefited from outsourcing. Two of the most important Health care companies in the US, ETENA and Humana, are outsourcing many jobs to Philippines and India. Mr. Ashwin also discussed that companies didn’t outsource all the activities, only some activities can be outsourced like IT, Finance jobs,,,etc. while others can’t be outsourced like the core activities as marketing, branding,,etc. Outsourcing was first done mainly for cost saving reasons but now many other factors contribute to the outsourcing decision and thus the cost savings became only one factor to country attractiveness, while others include the environment, the skills and willingly of people to learn. The Final point that he highly focused on was that outsourcing is enforced by customers, shareholders and suppliers.
The second talk was about “Indian culture & society” by Mr. Chiranjiv Singh. This was one of the special lectures we took, through which different aspects of the Indian culture were reflected which may be not related directly to the business but should be well understood as an important aspect of the Indian society. Mr. Singh mentioned that the Indian society is a culturally diverse in terms of language and religion but mostly characterized by the eccentric circles of the family, the extended family and the cast system. These characteristics appear mostly in marriage which is still arranged in most cases so that the extended families also need to match together. Then, Mr. Chiranjiv explained the concept of “Dharma” by telling a very nice story of a man who was trying to rescue a scorpion from the water and while he was trying to rescue him, every time he get bit by the scorpion but he didn’t give up and continue trying and when he was asked about the reason he said it’s my nature to rescue him and his nature to bit me, and this is the dharma, the innate nature of the things, for example the innate nature of the fire is to burn. Another important aspect of the Indian culture is the belief of birth and rebirth based on the four casts of the society; the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras and each cast has a dharma to perform a certain job and according to the quality of performance the person will be rebirthed again, that is why most Indians try to do good things. The most interesting thing that Mr. Singh mentioned was that the person needs to do exceptionally good work in order to be free from this circle of birth and rebirth. Concerning the cast system, he told us that India now can be considered in a transition state from the cast system to the individual system and this may be causing some problems right now.
The last talk today was about “succeeding in working with business partners in India” by Mr. Hubert Reilard, MD, EDF Induction Ltd. The roots of EFD Induction go back to the launch in 1950 of a universal induction hardening machine by the German company, Induktionserwärmung Fritz Düsseldorf GmbH (FDF). While FDF was expanding in the 1970s, an induction revolution was taking place in Norway, where engineers had figured out how to transistorize frequency converters for induction heating. In 1981 three of those engineers had invented some new techniques in the induction industry. In 1991 the managing directors of FDF and ELVA met by chance. They talked… and speculated. FDF was strong in stationary induction hardening machines. ELVA was the agile innovator with a track record in finding new applications for induction heating. What if the two companies got together? In January 1996 FDF and ELVA merged to create EFD Induction. Today, EFD Induction is Europe’s largest supplier of induction solutions for industry (number two worldwide!). After Mr. Reilard talked about the story of his German company, he told us how they decided to enter the Asian market by working in India in 1992 and despite that they don’t succeed too much earlier but again in 1998 they appreciated the importance of having market in India which is still growing to this day. Now they have 160 employees in Bangalore, India. As Mr. Hubert said that India nowadays possesses many indicators and most of them are positive ones for more investment. For example, 80% of the GDP is achieved from the medium & small companies, India is number four in purchasing power (e.g. there are ten million new users of mobile phones each year), the GDP growth rate was about 55 % until 2010 and now it is growing higher than average. Mr. Hubert Reilard’s talk was GREAT!! From all the lectures we had, this one was special in reflecting the point of view of a company which early appreciated the importance of working with the emerging business partners in India and thus his talk was rich in the practical experiences and lessons that any foreign business may need to know or may face in India. By being the last lecture in this day, it was a very nice closure.