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| The truth is that acquisitions also work as an incentive to build businesses. In the technology space, we have seen how the prospect of acquisition fuels start-ups rather than dampens their growth. It allows for a return over a shorter horizon and hence helps breed a spirit of entrepreneurship. |
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| The notion of a business having the same ownership for generations is in any case a throwback to the industrial era when businesses operated under fixed boundaries and the only change seen was of one generation handing over management to the next. Today, in the more fluid world of ideas, ownership, too, is a variable and it helps multiply strategic options. |
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| Also, acquisitions are a double-edged sword. Expensive acquisitions made in the name of a future potential can go disastrously wrong as seen in more than a few cases in India, with Electrolux being the poster boy of this phenomenon. |
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| The real determinant of success or failure is eventually in being able to read the market and deliver to its expectations. Here, multinationals have had a mixed record. |
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| Across categories, we have seen local companies holding their own and giving their multinational counterparts a run for their money. Be it in the FMCG, service or IT sectors, Indian companies have performed extremely creditably. As long as this ability remains, entrepreneurship will continue to thrive. |
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| Finally, the time has come to invert this question. This is the time when Indian companies are looking aggressively at international acquisitions themselves. The advantage of a global economy is that opportunities cut both ways. |
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| This is the time to move out of a siege mindset and to examine the world from a position of strength. The real question is one of the mental model we employ to see the world we live in. If we continue to see it from the narrow perspective of the nation state, with hard boundaries dividing people and markets, then we will continue to ask questions like these. |
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| We need instead to focus on the opportunities that the new world order is throwing and leverage our current attractiveness to our advantage. |
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| In a world ruled by market forces, it would be foolish to let the current buzz that surrounds India go unexploited. After all, in the global economic order, sometimes even exploitation can be a two-way street! |
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Suhel Seth
Co-CEO, Equus Redcell
Much has been made in recent times about the fact that there are very few Indian agencies left. That is, if you define Indian on the basis of ownership rather than the work they do or the insights they translate into effective marketing communications. |
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| I believe the world has moved beyond ownership of stock and has instead moved to ownership of ideas; ownership of markets and ownership of thought. |
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If that is the case, as many venerable thought leaders have said, then it really doesn
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