India Calling

Tauranga businesses are getting a taste of India on Tuesday.

NZTE are organising an India Market Forum and I have been asked to run one of the workshops. The purpose of the day is to provide an opportunity for prospective and current business exporters to India to both engage with prominent Indian business leaders as well as established local players in the Bay.

Timing they say is everything. Right now, India is very much on my mind. I am working with the management team at HBI Software in Bangalore on future strategy.

We first opened our doors on Ulsoor Road in 2001. Much has changed since then; not least the very specific move 'up the value chain'. I remember well in the early days how Indian IT companies were seen primarily as 'coders'. That is history. Today, Indian ICT companies manage whole projects from top to bottom. They compete head to head with global consultancies for multinational contracts. Indeed many of those global consultancies such as Accenture and IBM Services now have their own significant operations in India.

The focus of my own workshop is built around 'managing a business in India from Tauranga'. In truth, the challenge is not really that much different from running the same business from London, New York or the Valley. In New Zealand, it is only the perception that is really different.