Following a six hour stopover in Auckland post Fiji Fashion Week and a wonderful dinner with my two adult children, I boarded a Singapore Airlines flight for India - excited at what lay ahead and even more so now that the date had finally arrived.
First stop the Koru lounge, they code share with AirNZ. Here I meet up with three of my travelling companions from Global Women. We are to be part of an eight-strong delegation led by our British High commissioner, Vicki Treadell, combining in India with a ten-strong female delegation from the UK.
The Singapore Airlines flight was underwhelming. The old plane and equally old business class beds make AirNZ look great. The service however, was excellent.
A quick transit stop in Singapore and we were on our way to India.
We arrived at 10am on a Sunday. Once again, I had a nervous moment regarding the almonds and dried fruit in my bag. A scan of my luggage however, saw no extra activity from airport security and we were off to change our money into Rupees. Innocently I swapped my American dollars for the nominated currency and, given it was Thomas Cook, I saw no reason to negotiate - not so for others who successfully bartered their exchange rates up.
We were met by a hotel car and the one to two hour ride to the hotel commenced. After 33kms we arrived, checked in and got to manage our own time for the next three hours. We had a briefing at 5pm in one of the hotel bars.
The Taj Mahal Palace where we are staying, was the site of the Bombay bombing in November 2008 where 31 people were killed, including many foreigners so it’s steeped in history and extremely well-guarded. All bags going in and out must run via a security machine.
5 pm arrived and at the briefing we met the British delegation, 10 women led by Pinky, a delightful Indian woman from the UK.
Dinner was at the NZ High Commissioner's residence and we were transported in a huge bus (our transport for the rest of the stay). Indians traditionally eat late after a huge hosting of snacks with alcoholic drinks. It was a wonderful night where all the women connected, but late for some as we'd just arrived. Exhausted, we headed home excited as to this new country and the five days that lay ahead of us.
Day one was a morning at Mahindra - a large Indian company that, amongst other things, had set up a finance business that was enabling Indians that live rurally and in poverty, to borrow against the one asset they have to improve their homes: their land. These people have been seen as such high risk in the past that they have been unable to get access to funds. The smart thinking business model not only has a 20% return but also has a very small default rate - something like 1%. And for those that do default, there is no resale in these houses for the company as they are ensconced in villages and have no potential buyer, so they are essentially written off.
The afternoon was left open for some shopping given that a tragedy had befallen Rashmi Jolly, our host and esteemed director of the Bollywood film studios, who had contracted Dengue fever and had not survived - a huge loss for their film industry.
Dinner that night was an extravagant affair thrown together with a male Czechoslovakian delegation into premises so cluttered with art and sculpture that I began to see opportunities for my own crowded space.
The local paper had arrived to capture the moment and an accomplished guitar player topped off the night with his repertoire of English hits that saw us all in song mode.
The next day we had the most inspirational of visits to the Piramal Life Sciences Laboratory: a company that uses plants to put together some of its drugs, has its recipes steeped in history and the methods of ancient generations. I'm not sure I'm keen on the animal testing that they say is so necessary but its founder, Swati Piramal, is possibly one of the most inspirational women I have had the opportunity to listen to and meet. It was Swati who convinced her husband and his company to consider the plants and their health giving benefits as a way forward.
The afternoon and early evening saw us hosted by the Tata Group who, amongst other things have pioneered a $2000 car to capture the burgeoning Indian middle classes. The company is huge with a $100 billion turnover and definitely they know how to host.
We have certainly seen India in the most capable light. The connections of our British High Commissioner, Vicki, have enabled an insight beyond my expectations. The food has been amazing, the city frenetic, yet comfortably safe and certainly not one of harassment as I've been led to believe.
The population of 1.2 billion will lead to some huge challenges going forward as India finds its consumer feet.
The colour, the activity, the sites, the heat, the fashion and the food are all beyond anything I have ever seen. I have shopped at the markets and visited the high end department stores. I've meandered down a street selling nothing but jewellery from the high priced bling to the real mccoy.
There are people everywhere! Just getting around can be challenging but there is an inner beauty that continues to struggle through in a city that is slowly deteriorating. The roads, the housing, the general infrastructure are barely coping with the constant siege of people.
Corruption is everywhere. It’s simply about being aware as with any good business. Be informed and negotiate hard prior to the exchange of product or service.
I have loved all the food and remain well despite all the warnings. I have only eaten local and essentially vegetarian as I'm sure the chickens are tortured.
It’s a country of 1.2 billion people with 500 million living on less than a NZ dollar a day and tomorrow we all get to see this poverty first hand as the Magic Bus organization takes us into the Mumbai port trust slum project.
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Enjoying a beer at Leopolds in Mumbai. The café made infamous by the author of Shantaram
India: A force to be reckoned with
By Mai Chen
The last time I was in India, I was a poor, 24-year-old Harvard Master of Laws graduate and United Nations intern returning to New Zealand the long way.
My husband and I were backpacking and we stayed in a hotel where a low partition separated the rickety, flea-infested bed from the squat toilet. The dangerously low-hanging ceiling fan only spread the smell from the toilet throughout the room, and we used to be woken by loud banging on our door from people trying to take us to their shops.
The contrast could not be more stark a quarter century on. Our accommodation this time is the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, fully restored after the infamous terrorist attack in 2008.
The New Zealand British study tour I am on this week is led by the British High Commissioner to New Zealand, Vicki Treadell. As the previous Deputy British High Commissioner to Mumbai and an Asian woman herself, it is her impeccable contacts these 10 Kiwi and 14 British women on this delegation are leveraging off and the Mumbai companies and experts we visit clearly adore her.
Cesare Pavese says that life is not about days but about moments, so I have dropped everything to come and get some first-hand insight into what India is really capable of, and why business should be focusing on India as much as on China. I pick up the Economist and Time magazines at the airport and both have special reports on India. As if to underscore the need to get on and live your life, Bollywood's top filmmaker Yash Chopra who we were to meet on Monday passed away of Dengue fever on Sunday and his studio was closed in mourning.
We visit and hear from top executives and experts at three of India's best companies - Mahindra and Mahindra, India's biggest car manufacturer; Tata, ranked 45th out of 500 top global brands with $100 billion revenue and half a million employees (and inventor of the Nano, which is the world's most economical car costing just $2500); and Piramal, one of the biggest R&D companies in India, focusing on natural products and molecules. Dr Swati Piramal, vice-chairperson of Piramal, who has just been elected on to the Harvard University Board, said that she measures her time against human impact in deciding the difference she can make.
Despite the ever present poverty and corruption, India is a vast market, and a democracy with a young population profile. In 2010, 64 per cent of India's population was aged between 15-64. India's birth rate is now declining due to increased literacy and skill levels. The economic choices they make mean opportunities for Kiwi exporters, but also New Zealand educational institutions, which is why the Hon Steven Joyce has just led a New Zealand delegation to India.
Because of the level of official corruption, business people in India have to be savvy about politics and government. But Indians are now increasingly demanding better and improved transparency.
While there are already lots of laws and rules to promote transparency - the Right to Information Act has recently been passed, India's equivalent of our Official Information Act - enforcement of those laws is the stumbling block.
The chief legal adviser for Mahindra and Mahindra told us that there are only 12 judges per million people. Arvind Jolly, the managing director of JollyBoard, told me that justice delayed was justice buried. His cases kept getting adjourned because of a lack of judges and his legal bills kept mounting for no outcome.
Other business people tell me there are industries to steer clear of due to corruption. For example, the construction industry has a poor reputation as the primary means of laundering "black money". All of this highlights the value of New Zealand's No1 ranking in the Transparency International index for those doing business. Another stumbling block for growth is as Deepak Parekh, the chairman of the Housing Development Finance Corporation, says: "The British introduced bureaucracy, but the Indians have perfected it."
India is the size of Europe and has to be approached as a collection of markets. Individual Indian states, such as Uttar Pradesh, have economies and populations comparable to major economic powers, such as Brazil. Population and economic growth between these states is also not uniform and differs widely. The first question to be asked when considering doing business in India is: which India?
Figures from Dr Veena Mishra, the chief economist at Mahindra, show a doubling of Indian incomes from 2001 to 2011. India still has high but slowing growth when compared with the rest of the world, but that growth is uneven. Mumbai has the most expensive house in the world where 4 people live with 200 servants, yet over 50 per cent of the population live in slums in illegally built accommodation, and Mumbai has no subway despite a population of around 20 million people. The caste system still predominantly dictates marriage partners and what occupation you can have, although it is being eroded by affirmative action programmes.
KN "Vaidy" Vaidynathan, group chief risk officer at Mahindra said that "we overestimate what India can do in the short-term and underestimate what India can do in the long-term. Everything that is true of India, the opposite is equally true. Thus, you have to look at the macroeconomic story to really discern what is going on in India.
The challenges for India and for those doing business here are not for the faint-hearted, but there are some phenomenal success and innovation stories like the three companies we visited. They evidence that India is a force to be reckoned with.
Mai Chen, is a partner in Chen Palmer and author of Public Law Toolbox.
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