Understanding the local culture before you set up business is a due diligence that you cannot skip or keep for later. Harnessing local cultural quirks to gain business benefits is easy and effective. Working in India has not been an easy task for many companies from different geographies, but that's because they missed the point. Treating India as one country is a big mistake. North to south of this country is the same as traveling from United kingdom to Sicily and right back. That's the distance roughly. How could we assume that the culture would be the same throughout? Specially since India was not even a single country till a little while ago.
I am planning on writing a separate blog for each of the major states and pen my experience working with the strengths of each of those natives and their cultural quirks we could utilize to benefit the organization.
Certain states display loyalty to their bosses to extreme lengths. Beware! in this state, the staff will leave when the boss quits. Your attrition will always be in large numbers if the manager is unhappy-but here's the flip side;just keeping the boss happy will keep the team working, even during the economy downturn when you cant promise a bonus. How's that for starters?
An Australian company started a company in the south of the country and was hit with cultural issues, one after the other. Fresh from Down Under, the 10 man army was just not a match for the strong people network, incompetence in aggressive sales and high attrition. Two years later, they are finally settling in! Just the cost arbitrage did not help. The emerging markets are definitely India, Philippines, Korea, China...The future of your company lies not in knowing your competition; it lies in knowing your employees!
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