| Entrepreneurs in India |
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| Written by Niall Kelly |
| Tuesday, 21 June 2011 14:21 |
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On the 8th of June Adrian Norton, General Manager of Netwatch and I travelled to India as part of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Netwatch were finalists in 2007, and each year the alumni and the current finalists travel to an overseas destination for a series of workshops, CSR projects and meetings. What an amazing experience!
India as a country has to be experienced to be believed. The sheer scale of everything overwhelms the senses. With a population of over 1billion people, India experiences the best and worst of a developing nation; and an economy that is growing at 10% per annum. These sort of growth rates invariably mean that some parts of society are left behind, while other parts race ahead.
Some facts about India: • India has the worlds second largest workforce at 467 million We attended the Ernst and Young Strategic Growth Forum in Mumbai as part of the trip, where we met and networked with over 200 of India’s top entrepreneurs. During this conference, we listened to Robert Tucker give an outstanding session on introducing a culture of innovation into your business amongst other topics. I met many attendees that explained that Mumbai is experiencing a property boom at present, and every second delegate seemed to be involved in property in some way or other. Not surprisingly, they were very keen to hear of Ireland's experience over the last few years. Having said that, they were very aware of Ireland’s positive reputation, and were full of priase in terms of our export led recovery strategy. The group were given a session on the Saturday by UNICEF's Field Manager in Mumbai, and his team of volunteers that are working in the Mumbai slums as part of an initiative to provide schooling and life skills for young girls. Following a presentation, we travelled through monsoon rains, horrific traffic and flooded motorways to the heart of Mumbai’s slum area. We met some local “cottage” style businesses; to say that they have to deal with challenging conditions would certainly be an understatement. The physical environment in the slums is quite overwhelming; open sewers, raging with the volume of floodwaters from the monsoon, (indeed we nearly lost two of our party, as they both stumbled and tripped into a large underground drain, with one of them needing slight medical attention) absolute lack of any type of refuse collection, with piles of rubbish left wherever it accumulates, and lethal bare power cables strung from house to house. On several occasions, I was challenged for the right of way by some very large rats; these boyos are so used to human proximity that they don’t give way, quite unnerving for a Paddy who is absolutely terrified of these creatures, I don't mind adding. But the children that we met were a breath of fresh air. Happy, smiling, clean (relatively!) and full of the joys of life. They put on a traditional play and sang for us in their school; in spite of the extremely challenging conditions they seemed to be getting on with life as only kids can do. The trip was certainly a great experience; we networked with over 50 Irish companies and made many new friends and cemented old relationships from the previous alumni. Ernst and Young are to be congratulated on the logistics of moving such a number of individuals around in such challenging conditions, and we look forward to the opportunity to get together again as a group.
Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs visit the "cottage" businesses in Mumbai Image © Ken Lennox All Rights Reserved For more fantastic pictures from the trip by Ken Lennox - Click Here |
Some of the Children in Mumbai, smiling despite the rain. Image 
