Doing Business in 21st Century India

Doing Business in 21st Century India
Gunjan Bagla
Business Plus
ISBN-13: 978-0446402248
Non-Fiction, Business
Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali

India is portrayed as a country where technically competent workers are willing to work for a fraction of American wages, while provided at least equivalent quality of work. It is also portrayed as having a burgeoning middle class that craves Western living styles, and hence creates a demand for American goods and services. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Doing business in 21st Century India is meant as a guide for Americans who are exploring commercial opportunities in India. These opportunities could be for leveraging Indian human resources or tapping into the Indian market. The first chapter discusses the potential opportunities India has to offer for the production of goods and services, and as a market for these goods and services. The crown jewels of the book are chapters two and three where some of the particularities of the Indian culture and common business practices are outlined. Here Bagla tiles a mosaic of Indias in all shades of colors rather than a monolith India. The remaining chapters delve deeper into functional areas (human resources, marketing, finance, etc). The last substantive chapter discusses living and working in India.
Bagla provides a lot of good information for businesses considering leveraging India either as a resource for its operations or as a market for its goods and services. While specific industries or challenges are not discussed, the level of detail (through anecdotes) adds personality to the otherwise general discussion. The book’s tone is professorial, and sometimes condescending. The text would have benefited from the services of an editor. It is hoped that these services would eliminate typographical errors (of the variety that are not flagged by a spell checker), convoluted sentence structures, short one-sentence paragraphs, and inconsistent spacing. This book has a lot of good information and valuable insight to offer. It is unfortunate that one must tussle with writing style to get to the gems of knowledge that Bagla shares with readers.