Articles > Mastering Business in Asia
Mastering Business in Asia
by David West
This book, part of the Wiley series Mastering Business in Asia, is important for many, many reasons. It is excellent on
negotiation but for me, the real reason to read this book is its insights on Asia.
There has been a lot written on business and Asia but in the main, it has been written from the point of view of advice for
managers managing in Asia. Thus, so much of what has been written assumes that the Western manager will be in
charge and that he or she needs help understanding very different people and values to manage them better. Much of
this advice has been very good but perhaps increasingly, it is beside the point.
The phenomenal growth rate in China and India is now the talking point. Hitherto, we have been used to growth rates in
Japan. We have also been used to growth rates in the smaller Asian countries. Much of this growth has slowed but none
of these countries are as economically important as China and India are about to become.
While Japan has been, and is still important, its population is under 130 million - and is declining. The population of
China is 1.3 billion and that of India 1.1 billion - and both are increasing. The population of the world is about 6.5 billion.
Around 37% of the people in the world live in China or India.
Managing Asians?
Until recently, the West has lived with the fiction that this does not matter. That despite the number of people in these
countries, the knowledge and skills resided in the West. The economic growth rate of India and China should dispel this
notion. China has become the manufacturing centre of the world while India is rapidly becoming the services and IT centre
of the world. More importantly, this growth rate is fuelled mainly by 'indigenous' companies.
The Tata Group is one of India's oldest,
"... largest and most respected business conglomerates. The Group's businesses are spread over seven
business sectors. It comprises 93 companies and operates in six continents. It employs some 220,000 people
and collectively has a shareholder base of over two million."
Its revenues in 2004/5 were 17.8 billion US dollars. That's big but perhaps one of its 93 companies is more significant. Its
consultancy company, Tata Consultancy Services had cumulative four quarter revenues (to end December 2005) of
9,621 crores of rupees.
Means nothing to you? Well it should! A 'crore' is a number of rupees. In fact, a crore is 10 million rupees. Thus, 9,621
crores is 96,210 million rupees - and there are about 77 rupees to the pound sterling or 44 rupees to the US dollar. So, if
your maths is up to it, the revenues of this company (only one of 93 in the Tata group) amount around 1.2 billion pounds
sterling or 2 billion US dollars in a 12 month period.
OK, so the revenues of Accenture, the consulting giant, are $15.5 billion (still 2 billion less than the Tata group as a
whole) but the point is that Tata is a big and fast growing indigenous Indian company, "established by Jamsetji Tata in the
second half of the 19th century," and its consulting operations are not small beer - nor are they fuelled by ex-patriates.
This is an Indian knowledge business.