INDIA, May 5, 2011: While the United States struggles to right itself from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the Indian economy steams ahead with an annual growth rate of more than 9 percent. How did India sidestep the financial meltdown as supposedly more sophisticated operators in the U.S. stumbled?
Indian leaders have a different business model – the India way. Indeed, the joke in India is the economy grows while the government sleeps. Companies there succeed despite a significant lack of public infrastructure.
The Indian economy is not driven by low-wage manufacturing operations. It rides on the success of big corporations increasingly competing and winning in human capital-intensive industries such as pharmaceuticals, business services and IT, which have long been seen as the preserve of the West.
The India way takes a different approach to management and strategy. Differences begin with leadership: Indian business leaders are deeply involved in solving societal problems. Hindustan Unilever’s Project Shakti, for example, used the principles of microfinance to create a sales force in some of the subcontinent’s most remote regions.
Some of this doing good for society is necessary to do business in a country with massive problems and a government that cannot solve them on its own. Some of it comes from a long-standing tradition of corporate philanthropic giving and Hindu principles around service.
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