This winter, global leaders see success in India

By siliconindia   |   Monday, 26 October 2009, 22:47 IST
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Bangalore: As the winter season starts taking North America and Europe in its grip, top executives of the world's biggest firms are planning for a long economic winter in India. Janmejaya Sinha, the Asia Chairman of Boston Consulting Group, thinks that the winter sojourn to India of a growing flock of chief executives is indicative of the "rebalancing" in the global economy. Last month, Jeffrey Immelt, the astute CEO of General E, was here making a case for "reverse innovation" - the flow of knowledge and products from emerging economies such as India to the developed world. The conglomerate, he made it clear, is not going to be satisfied with small pickings from Asia's third largest economy. Close on his heels was Ford's Alan Mulally. He unveiled the small car 'Figo' as well as big Indian ambitions for the automaker. As advanced economies such as the U.S. reconcile to anaemic growth in the foreseeable future, the importance of being India has never been greater. According to International Monetary Fund forecasts, the U.S. gross domestic product is expected to shrink by 2.7 percent this year. And, the next growth is seen at a sluggish 1.5 percent. In the euro area, GDP is projected to contract by 4.2 percent this year before returning to marginal growth in 2010. India's $1.2-trillion economy, in contrast, is seen growing by at least 6.5 percent in the fiscal to March 2010 before it shrugs off the drag induced by the global recession. In November, we'll see Pepsico's Indra Nooyi, Yahoo's Carol Bartz, Intel's Paul Otellini, AMD's Dirk Meyers, Accenture's William Green and Nissan's Carlos Ghosn flying into India's sunny economic climes. This time, the talk won't be about marginal increases in investments but game-changing decisions. After all, the world's biggest corporations are stocking up for the future. Sinha said, "Currently, the American consumer spends about $10 trillion and 40 percent of the global population (China and India) spends about $2.5 trillion. Over the next 10 years, I think this number will change dramatically. Global CEOs are readying for this." David C Novak, who was in the country last week, announced that Yum!'s next goal is to become a billiondollar company in India. "Today, 100 million people can afford to eat our food. Five years from now, we expect the numbers to be 200 million," the Chairman and CEO of the restaurant company that operates KFC and Pizza Hut said. Hard Rock International's Hamish Doddsamish and NComputing's Stephen Dukker will also be sending out the message that India's importance in their global scheme of things has grown manifold as a result of the economic crisis. "India is a very high potential and high focus market for NComputing and our CEO is personally involved in growing the business multifold in the country," observed Raj Shah, Global Chief Marketing Officer of the desktop virtualisation hardware and software maker. "Earlier, it was the ICE (Information, Communication, Entertainment) sectors that saw CEOs flying in, but now the other ICE (Infrastructure, Construction, and Engineering) sector CEOs have started taking an interest in the India story," observed the India Head of a multinational company.