Mumbai: A few days after 26/11, Adam J. Gutstein, CEO of US-based Diamond Management and Technology Consultants Inc., a leading management and advisory firm, visited Mumbai on an unscheduled visit. “We have our clients and our office here, I needed to be here,” Gutstein said in an interview, about six months after the episode. “The city and the hotel, (were) virtually empty then.”
Last week, he was in India again, and found that “the city hasn’t missed a beat”.
Valuable experience: Diamond Management and Technology Consultants chief executive Adam J. Gutstein. Ashesh Shah / Mint
For this listed consulting firm, an anomaly in itself given that most consulting firms pride themselves on confidentiality, India is a relatively late start and contributes no more than 2% of its global revenues, but the work from India is so useful that the experience and inputs from here are used for their other clients elsewhere. And already, it has done some work or the other for most of India’s leading telecom companies. Edited excerpts:
How often do you visit India? Have businesses and the government evolved in the way they do business since your first visit?
I’ve been visiting India since the late 1990s. India has a chance to make some real progress. With the new government having won by such a substantial margin, it now gives them a chance to invest in some key issues such as investment in infrastructure.
Now, India is expressed in the same breath as China. The Hindu growth rate, where the notion is that you can only grow so much, is no longer the case. Businesses, as a rule, were not doing a spectacular job because they were hindered by the government. Now, what people outside India are saying is that India has a great political system, in the sense that it has a stable democratic government that is run by the rule of law for a long period of time. The government now has the impetus to change things to a more productive business climate. I think the attitude from countries and businesses outside India is that India is a good place to do business. I think the last time I was here was just a few days after 26/11. I came to Bombay, because we have clients and our office here. I care for my people and our clients needed to be here. So when I came here, the city was virtually empty and the hotel was virtually empty. Now that I am back, it seems as if the city hasn’t missed a beat. India is (in) a class of its own. Many people still look at India as only a market for cheap labour and great talent. What they forget is that India is a market. The balance between consumption and savings in the aggregate is going to shift over time. India’s middle class is only going to get larger.
While people are bullish, Stephen Roach recently commented that green shoots could soon turn brown?