Tuck India Business Conference

What's Your India Strategy?

Conference Overview

Sridar Iyengar describes himself as "bullish" about doing business in his native India. "Everywhere you turn there are opportunities," he told an audience at the Tuck India Business Conference on May 4, 2007. The best opportunities, he said, await companies that provide the technology and physical infrastructure to support their business, as well as better client services. Iyengar, director of Infosys, Rediff.com, and ICICI Bank and ex-CEO of KPMG India, was one of three panelists who offered advice on Investing in India. More than 200 people from the campus and business community attended the conference to learn more about India's remarkable market potential.

The country has the fourth largest economy in the world as measured by purchasing power parity. Its 250-million population base in the middle-income group provides a huge pool of global workers and consumers. And India's rural population—74 percent live in villages—offers a largely untapped market.

Chris Kelley, CEO of Weston Capital Management MD, Weston Capital Partners, joined Iyengar on the investment strategy panel. He described the markets in India as "robust" and said Weston has had success seeding and marketing hedge fund managers there. Lehman Brothers likewise has found India an attractive investment environment, according to panelist Taimur Hyat, senior vice president of Lehman's Strategy Group. But Hyat added that foreign investors must be prepared to handle a range of political, regulatory, and business risks, among them coalition-driven politics, foreign direct investment and foreign institutional investor restrictions, competition for talent, and rich valuations.

The ultimate pitfall, however, is approaching India with a one-size-fits-all strategy. In his keynote speech, "Leveraging India: Riding the Elephant," Thomas Verghese, director of emerging markets for General Electric, discussed some examples of how to succeed—and fail—doing business in his native country.

Experts at the conference agreed that successful strategies do not treat India as a homogeneous country but recognize and adapt to its diverse states and socioeconomic strata. That includes working well with a range of state governmental bodies within the country's coalition government, as Ron Somers, president of the U.S.-India Business Council, pointed out on the Doing Business in India panel. Somers and co-panelist Somesh Batra, co-chairman of the Seahorse Group, noted doing business in India is increasingly vital to U.S. interests through economic and ideological commonalities.

A lunchtime discussion on Progress from the Bottom Up focused on bottom-of-the-pyramid marketing. Ujwal Thakar, CEO of Pratham-India Education Initiative, spoke about his organization's efforts to educate the children of India, and Amit Chugh, co-founder of Cosmos Ignite Innovations, described his mission of providing safe lighting for people who currently use expensive and dangerous kerosene oil lamps.

This year's conference provided a sampling of Indian culture in addition to solid business advice. Registrants received business facts about the country tucked into their information folders. They dined on Indian cuisine at lunch and during coffee breaks. And many chose to attend the concert of Indian classical music, with sitar and tabla, that wrapped up the event. The conference even featured a book signing with BusinessWeek senior writer Steven Hamm, author of Bangalore Tiger.

Tuck's Center for International Business and the newly formed Tuck India Alliance hosted the Tuck India Business Conference. It was made possible by the support of The Khosla Family Fund, Dartmouth's John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and other sponsors.

Keynote Speaker Thomas Verghese of General Electric