For top-level business executives in the West, India is a dream destination to do business. But this attraction doesn’t translate into awareness. Not yet.
Surveys reveal the gap between western corporate honchos’ perception and reality
Nivedita Mookerji/Tanvi Shukla
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: For top-level business executives in the West, India is a dream destination to do business. But this attraction doesn’t translate into awareness. Not yet.
Majority of the chief executives, chief technology officers and chief financial officers in the western world see India as the most comfortable BRICS economy to do business, according to an international study by British Telecommunications (BT).
However, what may prove to be a stumbling block for many western corporates from actually doing business in the country may be the worrying ignorance of the realities in the BRICS bloc, including that of India, reveals a survey among 830 director-level decision makers in six sectors in the UK, US, Germany and France by research house Datamonitor.
Sixtyone per cent of respondents admit BRICS is “crucial” for their business to succeed in the long term.
The most startling finding in the Datamonitor report is that almost nine of ten directors could not name the currency of Brazil while 45% of them got India’s currency wrong. Fourteen per cent believe that vodka is Russia’s main export.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are together referred to as BRICS.
The highly skilled, English-speaking Indian workforce is a huge attraction for companies involved in the highly skilled financial services and telecoms, media, entertainment and publishing sectors.
To tide over, the BRICS group needs to formulate smart marketing strategies to boost brand awareness among the developed nations.
Meanwhile, the BT study said France is the only exception among the western nations that chose China over India as the most comfortable place to do business in all of emerging economies.
Also, on the whole, the Western world is least comfortable doing business in Russia among the BRICS nations. While French respondents felt China is the most advanced emerging economy in terms of IT and communications technology support, those interviewed from all other countries across the West rated India as the most advanced economy.
Interestingly, almost half of all US respondents said they rated India as the country in which they would be the happiest to do business.
Over 800 chief executives and top directors from across sectors such as manufacturing, retail, financial services, telecom, IT, government and non-profit organisations participated in a the BT study. The respondents are from the US, UK, France, Germany and other European countries.
“The survey helps us identify the gap between the reality and perception of the people interviewed,” said BT India chairman Arun Seth.
According to the study, larger companies tend to be more involved in the emerging markets, while those with smaller revenues like to focus on domestic markets. Data security is the biggest concern of the Western businesses of doing business in emerging economies.
The UK, according to Datamonitor report, is the most open to venturing into the BRICS. The survey found UK financial services companies a little apprehensive about investing in Indian markets because of strict government regulations which are seen as big barriers despite the opening up of the market and rising wealth.
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