Indian managerial talent on the rise globally

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The Indian manager’s resilience, adaptability, analytical skills, ability to manage complexities and stretch the extra hours has caught the world’s attention in recent years. The Indian executives in Silicon Valley have done their bit to bring our talent centrestage. Vishal Arora finds out why the world is increasingly seeking Indian Managers.

The 19th century witnessed an export of mainly unskilled workforce from India, followed by an exodus of low-skilled workers in the 20th century. Following suit were high-skilled engineers and information technology (IT) professionals towards the end of the last century. Most recently, it is India’s managers who are heading to “greener pastures”.

The recruitment figures of one of India’s top B-schools, the Indian Institute of Management — Ahmedabad (IIM-A), also reflect this emerging trend. In the institute’s final placements of 2007, around 30 per cent of the students accepted offers by firms abroad. And a majority of them were given jobs in developed economies. While close to 50 per cent were taken by firms in the UK, around 30 per cent were offered positions by companies in the US. To top it all off, the highest acceptances ranged from $2,25,000 to $3,00,000 per annum. Even the average entry-level salary stood at $1,15,300, a rise of around 25 per cent compared to last year.

As a matter of fact, among the beneficiaries of plum postings being offered are not only IIMs. For instance, an MBA student, Nair Shyamkumar Haridas, from the Holy Grace Academy of Management Studies in Kerala state bagged a salary of Rs 1 crore from Frontier Airlines, Australia this year, reported the Business Line financial daily.

In addition, this trend is not marked by entry-level positions only. Many are opting for foreign positions in their mid careers. For example, Nishant Upadhyay resigned from Citibank in New Delhi to leave for the US to join as a Portfolio Manager in one of the biggest financial trading firm located in the West Coast in 2005. “I moved to the U.S. as it is the hub of financial activity, especially in my specific niche, which is fixed income,” he says.

Vikas Khanna, who accepted an offer to be a Senior Systems Analyst in Unisys in Chicago in North America says, “In a developed economy, like in the US, there is a better professional work environment besides growth opportunities, more exposure to new technologies and a better salary.” Khanna, who worked in NIIT in New Delhi earlier, adds that a better lifestyle was also a strong reason for him to work in the US.

Niche Areas

What are the niche areas for Indian managers? Diwakar Nigam, managing director of Newgen Software Technologies Ltd., says young managers are being offered various consulting and investment banking jobs. In 2006, close to 400 students of IIM-Bangalore were offered jobs in these two sectors. And the placement that year witnessed an average international salary touching $90,000.

The abilities in demand globally are sophisticated finance and management, but also logistics and manufacturing - in whichever happen to be the fastest-growth industries at any particular time, says Professor Prabhu Guptara, who supervises Ph.D research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and is a visiting faculty at various B-schools around the world. “Right at this moment, as a result of the sub-prime crisis, it is in commodities more than anything else.”

Strengths of Indian Managers

How do Indian mangers fare as compared to the global managerial talent? Nigam says they are being selected primarily for their analytical skills, and “the rest they will probably develop in later stages of their lives”.

IIM-A professor TV Rao wrote a working paper, “Global Leadership and Managerial Competencies of Indian Managers,” in June 2007, to explore the most frequently perceived strengths and weaknesses of Indian management. He said competencies needed to be a global manager could be classified as transactional and transformational competencies. The former is a prerequisite for the latter, he added.

“Transactional competencies are needed to manage an organisation and are first steps to transformational competencies. They include team work, developing subordinates, coaching and mentoring, interpersonal competence, cross cultural sensitivity, diversity management, and openness to ideas.” He concluded by showing that many of these transactional competencies are the strengths of Indian managers, who are calm and composed, team players with good interpersonal skills, trustworthy and flexible, and approachable besides having pleasant personalities. Indian managers are also recognised for their job knowledge, he added.

Guptara, who specialises in global business trends, says the best Indian managers can also do as well as most Western managers in the rather more clear and defined (and mature) markets of Europe and North America.

“If one gets them from India, they may also have the advantage of being cheaper — though if one gets them from the West, then of course international salaries apply,” he adds.

In fact, a part of the credit for the boom in India’s economy goes to the country’s managers. Says Arun Seth, chairman of British Telecom (BT) India: “Today, India thrives on extremely capable human capital and this is one of our biggest strengths.”

The competency of Indian managers becomes more visible if the India Inc. is compared with its counterpart in China. China fares better on the infrastructure and reform front than India. And yet, India, despite its many disadvantages – such as still-developing-infrastructure and rampant corruption, is able to give a tough competition to China.

According to a recent survey by AT Kearney, India and China are competing almost neck-to-neck vis-à-vis the US. The study shows that 59 per cent of the 300 US and European executives polled think their competition would come from China and 45 per cent say it would come from India.

Working in complex and diverse scenarios has given Indian managers more exposure besides making them resilient and adaptable. Not only this, they are known for their hard work. According to the Grant Thornton International business report in May 2007, Indian senior managers spend 57 hours at work every week — more than those in the US and China. They work harder to keep up with the global competition, remarked the report.

It’s no wonder that when Indian professionals move to developed nations they fare better than even the citizens of those nations. For example, according to the US Census Bureau, the Indian median family annual income stands at $60,000, as against the national average of $38,885. Besides, it is estimated that about one-third of the engineers in California’s Silicon Valley are of Indian descent, while over seven per cent of valley’s high-tech firms are led by Indian CEOs.

No Place for Mediocrity

However, not all Indian managers are perceived as world class, but only the crème de la crème of the industry. Says Prof. Guptara: “The average Indian manager, for example in a government office, is hopeless from a global point of view. But the best Indian commercial and business managers are world class. That is because they have drive and creativity combined with real world experience in a difficult and unclear environment. So they can do better than most Western managers in such ‘hazy and undefined’ environments, for example in China or Russia or Africa or Latin America.”

A recent study substantiates Guptara’s view. According to a survey of over 4,000 firms across the UK, continental Europe, the US and Asia by the Centre for Economic Performance, McKinsey & Company and Stanford University (conducted in mid-2007), only one in every 50 business establishments in the US can be described as “very badly managed”, but more than one in five firms in India falls in this category.

Hot Destinations

Nigam of Newgen Soft says Indian managers have been going out for a long time to emerging countries of Africa and Middle East. More recently, they have been going to developed economies to work in the MNCs (multi-national companies) where they were employed in India. “Citibank, Bank of America are great examples of this trend. The likes of Vikram Pandit, Rana Talwar and Gurcharan Das were great and widely experienced managers,” he adds.

Says Sunaina Shivnani, a Delhi-based consultant at Stanton Chase International, what started as an export to mainly the US, and also the UK, is now moving to the South East Asian region — countries like Singapore and Thailand. “Dubai is also becoming a hot destination for Indian managers. Even China is beginning to appear on the export map given that many BPOs are coming up in that country now. Managers want China in their resumes,” she adds.

Will the Demand Sustain?

But, is the demand for Indian managers sustainable? While the reason behind the great demand is the outstanding performance of Indian managers in global companies, the major responsibility is to ensure that managers from India continue to be considered the best, said NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) President Kiran Karnik to the MBA Universe portal recently. They have to not only maintain the reputation but also enhance it, and for this they need a global mindset, he added.

There are some other shortcomings in the Indian manager, noted IIM-A professor T.V. Rao in his working paper. “Short temper, open-mindedness, and inability to build juniors are the most frequently mentioned areas needing improvement. Vision, values, strategic thinking, decision making skills, risk taking, innovativeness, ability to learn from mistakes, learning orientation and self renewal efforts, and cross cultural sensitivity are other qualities lacking in Indian managers,” he said.

Gain or Loss for India

Export of good managers is inevitable, thinks Arun Seth of BT India. “Talent has no passport as we live in an era of distributed intelligence and hence today as the world is getting flat, organisations are going where they find the right skill set and capability,” he says. And Guptara thinks the export of good managers, which is a “double-edged thing”, will benefit in the long run.

“On the one hand, our best managers get global exposure - they contribute to as well as learn from the best in the world — and that can't be bad. On the other hand, we don't have the benefit of having them at home in our own country! But I guess in a globalising world, the export and import of managers (exactly as with the import and export of commodities, products and services), is inevitable in the first place and, in the long range, it will be beneficial - even if there are significant short-range disadvantages. And we must not forget that India too has been getting good managers from the West since the British days (during the British rule in the 19th and 1st half of the 20th century) — learning from them was certainly one thing that contributed to our producing some of the best managers in the world — actually at least from the 1930s onwards.”

Besides, many global organisations, which offer global career paths to their managers, see internal movements as a retention strategy rather than a loss.

Says Ajoyendra Mukherjee, VP & Head, Global HR, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services): “The middle management is an important asset for a knowledge organisation like ours – it offers a unique combination of skill and experience. Understanding the aspirations for this segment of the talent pool and creating growth opportunities in the organisation that meet their aspirations is the key to the success of our retention strategy for our managers.

“We have built global mobility into the career path planning of our employees. International assignments, global opportunities and challenging engagements in the forefront of global technologies are a key value proposition we offer to TCSers.”

Mukherjee adds that the TCS’ focus on grooming managers across the organisation’s network for global leadership positions allows them to offer continual opportunity for upward mobility to their managers. “Ambassador Corps, for example, is a comprehensive learning and development program for managers to move into global roles in sales,” he adds.

History of Talent Export

The export of Indian workforce has its roots in the British taking Indians as indentured labour to countries like Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Surinam, Malaysia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka in the 19th century. In the 20th century, after the World War II, Indian labour and professionals in large numbers left to meet the demand for workforce in European countries, which had faced damage due to the war. Later, a large chunk of low-skilled labour moved to the Middle-East, followed by an export of high-skilled professionals, mainly engineers and those in the IT (information technology) sector, in developed countries like the US, Canada and Australia. And now, it is the managers who are leaving the country.

It is estimated that today there are over 25 million overseas Indians in 110 countries. According to the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, that there are 851,000 in Canada, 1,500,000 in Saudi Arabia, 1,200,000 in the UK, and 1,678, 765 in the US.

Signs of Reverse Brain Drain

Amid the emerging trend of professionals leaving the country, one can also notice what is termed as the “reverse brain drain”. Says BT India’s Seth: “It is noteworthy that there is a reversal of the brain drain, where Indians who had moved abroad for better lifestyle, work environment and salaries are heading back home as the prospects in India’s booming economy is par excellence.”

Nigam agrees with Seth, saying, “Today I see great opportunities in India and the migrating managers must consider the India option as well. It may be less paying, but they will reap an enriching experience that will be much more meaningful in the long run.”

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