Anthropology of Indian GPs

One of the nicer things of being a part of a "cross-border business" is that it gives you perspectives on people from different cultures and backgrounds. This has led yours truly developing a passing interest in the anthropological characteristics of the Indian GPs and the similarities (or the lack of it) with his Western counterpart.






Reading "The Argumentative Indian" by amartya Sen only strengthened my conviction about how Indians seem to be so different from the rest of the world. So, here goes my observations on the flop side:


Wildly optimism: If ever there was an olympic sport on Reckless optimism, I am sure Indians would win it hands down. This trend seems even more so prevalent amongst every stakeholders. when one takes stake in the long term, it is not uncommon to find every single parameter ranging from time to completion, projections, valuations, number of issues being stated on other side of caution by a factor of at least 2 (and in the worst cases 10). If an Indian told you he would meet you in 30 minutes, 45 minutes is par for the course, 60 minutes acceptable and 90 minutes is when you should begin to SMS as a courtesy (saying "Running late. will be there in 10 minutes." when you are at least 30 minutes away from the destination).
This seems to stretch across all projections - case in point,being the controversy around completion of commonwealth games.

A lot of GPs too seem to have this DNA firmly baked in - I have heard of at least one GP talking about plans to go IPO for a company that apparently was on the verge of bankruptcy.



Joy of debate/Equating time with work: Ask any LP visiting India what his favourite irritant is and he would complain about all meetings in Indian running way behind schedule. Right from LP conferences to review meetings, if you are not getting exasperated by the amount of information (most irrelevant and harmless ! as in Douglas Adams' speak) by the length of the day, you certainly are not in India. Even in several offices I know of, people equate hauling themselves ass in their chairs all day to the equivalent of working hard. Ask what was accomplished and you will get everything but the answer.

Tardiness and lack of attention to detail: Somewhere down the line the Gandhian philosophy of "Simple living - big thinking" seem to have been equated with tardiness. Our attention to detail and respect for other people's lives and times seem to be low and could certainly do with a lot more attention. A lot of reports I am told are mere improvisations and "word smithing" over the previous period's reports keeping in line with our credo of "recyling" - it looks like we have misunderstood it quite a lot !

Did I miss anything ? Well, it does not look so - not certainly after the conversations I have had with my counterparts in other PE funds - we are all in the same "slowboat".

~Varadha
(varadha.r1@gmail.com)