Israeli business publications spotlight India's opportunities

Thursday, 06 January 2005, 20:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
JERUSALEM:Israeli business publications are spotlighting India as the land of golden opportunities. What amounted to a trickling interest a decade ago has turned into a swift current as more and more established and start-up high-tech companies join the bandwagon of promotional missions to and from India. The swelling awareness of India's enormous reservoir of skilled manpower and sparkling profit payoffs was aptly illustrated this week with the Hebrew publication of two comprehensive studies by Israel's leading business dailies. India: A Bilion People in Perpetual Motion, published by the Globes Research Division with the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute (IEICI), is essentially an Israeli businessman's manual to India. It is packed with statistical data, analyses and forecasts of the Indian economy and includes vital information on the Indian business scene to guide new Israeli investors in their first steps. India, say its authors, is "one of the world's most fascinating economies today. The subcontinent is well along the road to reforms which have integrated India into the global economy and wrought dramatic structural changes to it." Furthermore, the study notes, "due to controls exercised by the country's central State Bank of India in successfully dampening inflationary pressures, India enjoys an especially outstanding financial and monetary stability compared to China's vulnerable macro base." India's rapid growth, it says, "is a direct outcome of the colossal development of its services sector which today comprises 51 per cent of the Indian economy. This is correctly identified with the astounding growth of its information technologies and specifically in its software and hardware sales which have annually expanded by some 40 per cent since 1991, on an average, rising from several hundred million dollars in 1990 to 12 billion dollars in 2003." The Globes study devotes chapters to a broad overview of the Indian economy, its IT sector, culture and neighbours; recent challenges and future trends; regulation practices, investment incentives and taxes; foreign trade and investment, currency exchanges, bilateral agreements, entrepreneurship and favoured export branches. Most importantly, it offers tips and practical advice related to a range of industrial, agro-technological, communications, and medical sectors, as well as a telephone and address directory of pertinent Indian government offices and other useful business contacts. Israel's other business daily, The Marker, a monthly magazine published by the Haaretz Group, devotes the cover story of its January 2005 issue to a 32-page report on India, dubbing it as the world's "new Silicon Valley." The authors unfurl the facts and figures of Israel's remarkable success story ($2.1 billion in bilateral trade for 2004). But they also strongly warn against a crude mercantile approach that sees only the fast buck and ignores "the secrets of an alternate management creed" that cultivates a "corporate esprit de corps" to enhance competitive performance in the market place. "In so far as managers combine honesty, credibility, ethics and values in their day-to-day methods of management, so their competitive edge will grow and their business will develop as a stable enterprise capable of adjusting to change," wrote The Marker's editor, Sagy Hemetz, in a lead editorial. This was the basic lesson he drew from an international conference on "Corporate Culture and Spirituality" which he attended in Bangalore last November. "This is no more than creating team flexibility. Money, as every manager knows, is an important motive with everybody - but is not supremely important," says Hemetz. "Different companies in the United States today combine additional manpower elements such as yoga lessons and meditation seminars to craft a happier, more loyal and more efficient personnel." The Israeli high tech sector is not far behind and has also begun to invite international gurus of this new management approach, says Hemetz. One article is devoted to an interview at the Bangalore Conference with Indian spiritualist guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who is seen by Israelis as a hybrid between Tibet's Dalai Lama and the Jewish Sefardi Kabbalist Sage Baba Sali. Additional articles are devoted to modern life in Bangalore, conversations with resident Israelis in local high tech businesses there and an interview with Israeli agronomist Elisha Foxman who manages a 30-hectare Indian farm training station on Bangalore's outskirts sponsored by the Israeli kibbutz Beit Hashita. Also included is a double spread graphic map of Bangalore's Silcon Valley locating major high tech companies from all over the world.
Source: IANS
siliconindia