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On First Impression, Mumbai Can Be Scary

FedEx’ outgoing India head, Jacques Creeten, says stories about sluggish India come from Indians settled abroad who think the country is stuck in the 1970s

Published: Jul 14, 2009 09:00:10 AM IST
Updated: Jul 14, 2009 04:22:10 PM IST

I have been here for 10 years. My son pretty much grew up here. He is moving to London and the funny part is he knows people there — people from Mumbai who are joining out there. No matter where I go I keep running into people that I know from here. You can’t put India off the global map anymore.

Relocating to India
I always found India a very easy, welcoming place. The first time when you come to Mumbai, it is almost overwhelming. From the number of people to the big contrast between the rich and the poor and the state of the infrastructure. There are a lot of things that scare people.

“When I came here people asked me what did I do wrong to have been sent out here? Now I get invited to speak about how do you do business in India?”
Image: Dinesh Krishnan
“When I came here people asked me what did I do wrong to have been sent out here? Now I get invited to speak about how do you do business in India?”
But I have lived here for a long time, as well as in Dubai, Turkey and Italy. At the end of the day there is much more similarity between all these places than there are differences.

With India’s growing importance in the global economy, you also see a change in the expatriates coming in. When I came here, a lot of expatriates were people at the end of their career. People who were at the beginning of their career ladder wouldn’t come here. That has changed dramatically. When I came here people in the business world asked me what did I do wrong to have been sent out here? And now 10 years down the line, I get invited to gatherings in Europe where I am asked to speak about how do you do business in India?

Doing business
You’ve got to keep in mind a few things. Take corruption for example. India doesn’t score very well in the surveys. But through 10 years of doing business here, I have never been confronted with the issue. Things go slow sometimes as there’s more paperwork. But these are changing. People want to get things done on time. Although there are still a lot of stories of old India, you find they are from Indians who live abroad. For some reason, they think their country stands still while they are out. When they come back they have a picture of India in 1975.

At FedEx I think we were lucky in dealing with the government. Our industry falls under a number of ministries. One of which is civil aviation which, because of its global nature, is probably one of the more progressive ministries. In the commerce ministry, we had to do a lot of education — about the fact that our industry actually facilitated trade and economic growth. But as things started to fit in, as an industry we got support from the government. The old-fashioned mentality that every businessman is a crook by definition is changing.

Indian work ethic
Although people jump jobs, by and large there is serious loyalty and pride in being part of an organisation — more than I have seen in the US or Europe. In the West I do my nine to five and it doesn’t matter if I am working with GM or Ford. Here, people step up a lot more to make the company successful and really identify with that success. The best ambassadors are people that work for you, going back to their communities and identifying with the company.

Challenges
On the other side, the hardest piece I found was that Indian schools do a tremendous job of technical capability — marketing, pricing, analysis, IT or engineering — but do not allow for leadership skills. In an environment where you have a lot of youngsters making two to three times what their parents are making — and by the way have 15 other job offers — you need to deal with that reality.
There is no shortage of talent. It doesn’t surprise me that in India you don’t have too many expatriates. You don’t need them. But schools and colleges need to have that conversation on an industry level. With a large developing market like India, it’s going to grow but it’s not going to grow nice, it’s going to be bumpy. That requires a new level of management and leadership and a lot of companies are putting that in house because they don’t have a choice.

If you want the best and you want to get the best out of them, you don’t do that with command and control. It just doesn’t work. In a very slow organisation that has been built over years and years, you will have the different layers of management — the older people on top, young guys at the bottom. But with the change of technical skills, you now find a 25-year-old holding a management position. How do you get a 25-year-old to command the respect of a 35- or 45-year-old? You need to change the whole mentality.

It is important to wind up the education and prepare the younger generation to step into those roles faster.

I think one piece Indians have figured out much better — even in Mumbai which is about making the deadline, making the buck — is a balance between personal and business life. India has been a great place for me and my family. It is a very different lifestyle and I think it kind of rubbed off a little. I am a less hectic person than I used to be. I am sure my wife appreciates that a lot.

Jacques Creeten was Fedex MD - sales and marketing, India, Africa and Mid-East. He returned home to Antwerp this June, after 10 years in Mumbai.

(As told to Cuckoo Paul & Ashish K. Mishra)

(This story appears in the 17 July, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)

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