The stories successful companies tell

We've never had it so good. We've got a new Hindu rate of growth which is at least 6 per cent per annum, our companies are setting up and taking over plants abroad, our managers and engineers now have global careers, and we're rapidly becoming the world's back office.

Our stock markets and companies have become the latest destination for foreign capital. More and more of the world's best companies feel it necessary to set up base in this country. There is little doubt that, over the last decade or so, India has successfully plugged itself into the circuits of global capital.

How has this been achieved? Is it the lure of India's large market, or its attraction as a low-cost base that draws MNCs to India? What are the roots of competitiveness in Indian companies? In short, what is it that makes India Inc tick?

It's a vitally important question, and one that many experts have been intent on finding out over the past few years. The efforts of McKinsey and the CII, in particular, are well known. The World Economic Forum has seen much debate and discussion on the subject.

There are many ways to study competitiveness. One of them is to look at policy measures and try to find out which government policies were responsible for the change in the Indian business environment. Another is to study the macroeconomic data and try to judge which sectors have done well and why.

Yet another approach is to record and analyse the change in the Indian mindset""from an insular and defensive position to an outward-looking and confident one. Studying successful Indian companies and crunching their numbers is another method.

But perhaps the most interesting way to approach the subject is not so much to analyse, but to tell the stories. And the best way of telling the stories is to let the actors speak for themselves. It is, after all, those who work in an organisation who make it competitive, and they should be allowed to tell their stories. Besides, reading them is so much more fun than running through a list of dry facts.

It is this story-telling approach that distinguishes Subir Roy's book. Subir has a list of companies and sectors that he feels are competitive. He looks at companies in the software, BPO, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals space, and does detailed studies of companies like Tata Steel, L&T, BHEL, and Reliance, to name some of them.

He then takes a look at GE's experience in India, the logic being that if India is becoming competitive then global companies too will want a share of the action here. On the basis of these historical analyses he arrives at conclusions about Indian competitiveness.

Subir believes that India is emerging as a low-cost competitive player in anything knowledge-based and that individual success stories in manufacturing are highly possible. But his conclusions are not half as absorbing as the stories he unearths.

Consider, for example, what NV Tyagarajan, CEO of GE Capital International Services, had to say: "Our premise always was that in this country we will be able to find a much more educated workforce than in the US doing similar work. That educated workforce would not only be able to work the process better but also improve over time. The other premise was that not only would the work be done at a lower cost but deliver better quality. So it almost became a slogan with us: Come to us for cost and stay with us for quality."

Or think about what the CSIR's Mashelkar had to say on their partnership with GE, "We had developed a superior process in polycarbonate in which GE have a 40 per cent market share. When we first filed a patent on it, it was almost like putting a flag on their territory."

On India's BPO advantage, this is what K Ganesh, then CEO of Customer Asset, had to say, "Our education system ... gears us for office, rather than manufacturing jobs ...Culturally, we feel that the best job is in an airconditioned office in front of a computer. It is this mindset that makes BPO a career of choice and brings to it people with better skills. In contrast, in the US a BPO job is a temporary one, in between other preoccupations and one of the last options."

Or listen to what Arun Jain of Polaris thinks of the future, "Some of the US and Canadian companies which are choosing us are saying, we would like to work with you not because of the money saving but your processes of delivery ...The same products that Americans are selling at $1 million we will be selling for half a million or less."

On competitiveness in pharmaceuticals, Srinivas Lanka of Aurobindo Pharma is quoted as saying, "... the entire bulk drugs industry has to move to countries like ours where technology is available and costs are reasonable. Even God cannot stop the migration of bulk drug manufacturing to countries like India and China."

What about building Indian brands? Ranbaxy believes that "building the corporate identity as a brand is the best, most intelligent way to leverage your presence in international markets. We have built this blue R brand. It is our endeavour that this blue R packaging will be in every single drug store in the US."

Consider what Farzaan Engineer, managing director of Quintiles Spectral (India), says about contract research, " Doing work here is globally competitive, emphatically so. Slowly, the research infrastructure is improving so that pockets of excellence are being created and Indian research is getting globally integrated." Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon says, "India should be able to produce every single generic coming off patent in two to three years."

It is these views and anecdotes (and there are plenty of them) from the people who're fighting in the trenches for the Made in India brand that make this book such an interesting read.

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MADE IN INDIA
A STUDY OF EMERGING COMPETITIVENESS

Subir Roy
Tata McGraw Hill
Price: Not stated
Pages: 210