Globalization - Business Leaders Panel

Posted by OMShare

at October 11, 2009

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B. Muthuraman, Managing Director, Tata Steel
Rich Lavin, Group President, Caterpillar
Subodh Bhargava, Chairman, Tata Telecom
Sanjay Khosla, EVP and President, Intl., Kraft Foods
Moderated by Mohanbir Sawhney, Professor, Kellogg School of Business

Mr Khosla emphasizing on innovation in global markets by giving examples of Oreo cookies citing making changes to its product in the Chinese local market to become number one.

Mr Lavin introduces himself and talks about the importance of free trade and globalization. He also emphasizes about selling not only in US but also the outside market and winning the local businesses outside.

He talks about having worked extensively in Asia and seen the dramatic expansion/changes in free trade. He emphasizes the importance of local people, local business in India and China which is critical part in global growth.

Mr. Subodh talks about liberalization in India and believes that it has delivered three things.
-Decision making
-Unleashing of entrepreneurship
-Strategy, first time Indian managers looked at strategy, prior to that all it was about was getting licenses.

The downside to globalization was the disparity but Indian companies moved impressively during this time. Looking for different other geographies, new markets to expand business.

Mr Muthuraman on globalization
-India far more than global than many other countries since ancient times.
-Indians can adjust to different cultural diversities by nature which leads to taking on globalization coming naturally
-Due to long colonial rules/socialistic patterns innovation was not there but Tata Steel after liberalization became competitive and stood the ground.
-One of the challenges with Tata Steel was to change the mindset of its people, of thinking big and turn to globalization. It took time but they have managed to bring about radical changes on this front.

Panelist talks about passion and processes to bring about efficiencies in the businesses. They talk about the passion in emerging markets (India/China) to bring about the best products to the world.

On creating & protecting intellectual property in India:
They feel that until liberalization no one cared about it and to create it. Now there is a change in mindset, be it bio tech or other fields, and today India can be relied upon to be trust for protecting intellectual property.

On the approach to acquire outside India, Is this the best way to buy scale? Although entire direction is not on going all the way to acquisition but in markets where it is difficult to build business organically, an acquisition can help.
This has to be looked upon on a case to case basis.