Doing business with India – an expert speaks
A function was recently held in Auckland under the aegis of the Indian New Zealand Business Council, where Rupert Holborow the High Commissioner to India and Don Rae the International Marketing Manager for India at the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) spoke at length about the various opportunities India presents for Kiwi businesses and more importantly the models and pathways these companies should develop to crack the burgeoning Indian market.
Don who is passionate about fostering collaboration between New Zealand business and partners in India is fondly referred to as “Mr.India” in the trade circles in New Zealand as he is a walking talking encyclopaedia of information on business with India. He is an experienced public speaker and has 20+ years experience covering trade development, marketing, e-business, website development/admin, analysis, project management, research, training, systems documentation.
His current role at NZTE involves 3 main streams of work, focusing purely on India:
- Work with Regional Management Team - planning, strategy, events, business missions.
- Work with Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade and other government departments/agencies - business aspects of in-bound/out-bound ministerial visits including briefings, business missions.
- Work with NZTE clients and other external stakeholder organisations - research, facilitation of finding business partners/investment, and so on.
At this INZBC function, a jam packed room of over 100 people having interest in doing business with India waited impatiently to hear Don, who started off with giving a perspective of the Indian market which he termed as one of the fastest growing markets in the world with a huge middle class who possess enormous spending power.
The three areas he discussed were markets, opportunities and models. Talking about markets he commented that a Kiwi company planning an India wide entry was rather ambitious and instead they should focus on a metro like Mumbai, New Delhi, Calcutta or Madras. The official population of Mumbai is 19mn and hence should be big enough for a Kiwi company to try its hand on. Talking about business sectors, he mentioned that there are opportunities in machinery, electrical equipment, medical equipment and other related specialised areas delivering innovation as India has a great demand in the areas of technology across the board, not to mention cool chain and agriculture. He strongly recommended that the area of focus for Kiwi companies wanting to enter India should be where there is a specialised Intellectual property which can be either in a technology or even a service. Since Indian has no dearth of capital or skilled work force, any innovation in technology being brought in by a Kiwi company will be readily embraced. Opportunities in the services sector were in retail franchises, designers, engineering firms, architects amongst others.
Talking about models to enter the Indian market – Don rightly pointed out that every situation is unique and there isn’t any one model that fits all but recommended that finding and agent or a distributor, manufacturing under license, partnering with a local company, OEM model and lastly the wholly owned model would be the probable entry models. The message he gave was that companies wishing to enter India should indigenise and emphasised on the fact that New Zealand companies should adapt to India. He compared India to a large beautifully decorated elephant that has a whole bunch of flies hovering around to gain its attention, and New Zealand is one of them. To attract this elephant’s attention, they have to adapt to the elephant and not vice versa.
The most interesting part of his speech was about actual examples he presented of Kiwi companies doing business with India employing the above discussed models. He mentioned a company operating in the highly specialised transport sector which followed the agent/distributor model and spent 10 years in thoroughly understanding the market and the result is a highly successful presence today in India with a healthy market share.
The other example he gave was about a specialist design company which accessed the Indian market via an existing customer it had in New Zealand who had operations in India. Due to this pre-established relationship its entry into India was facilitated.
The third example he gave was about a company in the electrical market which followed the OEM model. The New Zealand company happened to hire a person of Indian origin who got them in touch with his past employer in India and now it has been seven successful years of this business, whereby they make the equipment here and put the logo of the Indian company and export it to them.
Another pertinent example was a company in the South Island which developed a fluid pump which was very suitable to the Indian conditions but this company did not possess the scale to manufacture for the Indian market. This company then went to India looking for someone to manufacture it under license for them. After having discussions with an Indian company for 18 months, both parties realised that they were not the best fit and hence the Kiwi Company had to restart its efforts.
The model of starting your own wholly owned subsidiary might work for some large companies having substantial budgets – but they also have to indigenise and hire Indian team members, who are highly competent but not cheap any more as they demand salaries comparable to international standards and the job churn is also high.
The very strong message Don communicated by giving these true life examples was that people to people connections and relationships was very important to succeed in India. The other important ingredients are to indigenise and to be patient and persevere, as nothing is going to happen in India overnight. All successful companies did not give up and had realistic time frames and budgets and exhibiting patience and thus have been successful.
He closed his very engrossing and passionate presentation by offering all help from NZTE in finding the right partners, agents, distributors or to find the right market and model for your India plan.
A function was recently held in Auckland under the aegis of the Indian New Zealand Business Council, where Rupert Holborow the High Commissioner to India and Don Rae the International Marketing Manager for India at the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) spoke at length about the various...
A function was recently held in Auckland under the aegis of the Indian New Zealand Business Council, where Rupert Holborow the High Commissioner to India and Don Rae the International Marketing Manager for India at the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) spoke at length about the various opportunities India presents for Kiwi businesses and more importantly the models and pathways these companies should develop to crack the burgeoning Indian market.
Don who is passionate about fostering collaboration between New Zealand business and partners in India is fondly referred to as “Mr.India” in the trade circles in New Zealand as he is a walking talking encyclopaedia of information on business with India. He is an experienced public speaker and has 20+ years experience covering trade development, marketing, e-business, website development/admin, analysis, project management, research, training, systems documentation.
His current role at NZTE involves 3 main streams of work, focusing purely on India:
- Work with Regional Management Team - planning, strategy, events, business missions.
- Work with Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade and other government departments/agencies - business aspects of in-bound/out-bound ministerial visits including briefings, business missions.
- Work with NZTE clients and other external stakeholder organisations - research, facilitation of finding business partners/investment, and so on.
At this INZBC function, a jam packed room of over 100 people having interest in doing business with India waited impatiently to hear Don, who started off with giving a perspective of the Indian market which he termed as one of the fastest growing markets in the world with a huge middle class who possess enormous spending power.
The three areas he discussed were markets, opportunities and models. Talking about markets he commented that a Kiwi company planning an India wide entry was rather ambitious and instead they should focus on a metro like Mumbai, New Delhi, Calcutta or Madras. The official population of Mumbai is 19mn and hence should be big enough for a Kiwi company to try its hand on. Talking about business sectors, he mentioned that there are opportunities in machinery, electrical equipment, medical equipment and other related specialised areas delivering innovation as India has a great demand in the areas of technology across the board, not to mention cool chain and agriculture. He strongly recommended that the area of focus for Kiwi companies wanting to enter India should be where there is a specialised Intellectual property which can be either in a technology or even a service. Since Indian has no dearth of capital or skilled work force, any innovation in technology being brought in by a Kiwi company will be readily embraced. Opportunities in the services sector were in retail franchises, designers, engineering firms, architects amongst others.
Talking about models to enter the Indian market – Don rightly pointed out that every situation is unique and there isn’t any one model that fits all but recommended that finding and agent or a distributor, manufacturing under license, partnering with a local company, OEM model and lastly the wholly owned model would be the probable entry models. The message he gave was that companies wishing to enter India should indigenise and emphasised on the fact that New Zealand companies should adapt to India. He compared India to a large beautifully decorated elephant that has a whole bunch of flies hovering around to gain its attention, and New Zealand is one of them. To attract this elephant’s attention, they have to adapt to the elephant and not vice versa.
The most interesting part of his speech was about actual examples he presented of Kiwi companies doing business with India employing the above discussed models. He mentioned a company operating in the highly specialised transport sector which followed the agent/distributor model and spent 10 years in thoroughly understanding the market and the result is a highly successful presence today in India with a healthy market share.
The other example he gave was about a specialist design company which accessed the Indian market via an existing customer it had in New Zealand who had operations in India. Due to this pre-established relationship its entry into India was facilitated.
The third example he gave was about a company in the electrical market which followed the OEM model. The New Zealand company happened to hire a person of Indian origin who got them in touch with his past employer in India and now it has been seven successful years of this business, whereby they make the equipment here and put the logo of the Indian company and export it to them.
Another pertinent example was a company in the South Island which developed a fluid pump which was very suitable to the Indian conditions but this company did not possess the scale to manufacture for the Indian market. This company then went to India looking for someone to manufacture it under license for them. After having discussions with an Indian company for 18 months, both parties realised that they were not the best fit and hence the Kiwi Company had to restart its efforts.
The model of starting your own wholly owned subsidiary might work for some large companies having substantial budgets – but they also have to indigenise and hire Indian team members, who are highly competent but not cheap any more as they demand salaries comparable to international standards and the job churn is also high.
The very strong message Don communicated by giving these true life examples was that people to people connections and relationships was very important to succeed in India. The other important ingredients are to indigenise and to be patient and persevere, as nothing is going to happen in India overnight. All successful companies did not give up and had realistic time frames and budgets and exhibiting patience and thus have been successful.
He closed his very engrossing and passionate presentation by offering all help from NZTE in finding the right partners, agents, distributors or to find the right market and model for your India plan.
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