Working in India

Was recently asked by colleagues in office to share how my London experience has been. The more time I spend thinking about it, the longer the list gets. So what really is different?

Differences abound. But can be categorised along the following lines

1. Differences in the market
2. Different work practises
3. Different culture
4. Different organisational emphasis
5. Different clients

Starting with the first point, the market is different. Britain is a far more homogenous market than India. The sheer width of the market is astounding in India when you compare it to how the rest of the world looks.

Two - the work practises are far more evolved. Largely a result of the different clients which our company has in India and the UK. India projects are a bottom up exercise. You deal with the implementers of strategy, the marketing teams. In the UK, projects take a top-down approach. Your clients are the strategic planning & research teams within organisations, usually at the most senior global positions in the company. Since strategic planning and research teams are not the implementers of projects, this adds an additional layer of work within the project - the job of communicating the output of projects to the implementers (read marketing teams) on behalf of the client. There are also greater chances of a project not seeing the light of day and being implemented once it is complete. So, UK projects lay a far greater emphasis on the communication of the outputs, visible in fancy output, use of graphics and advanced presentation formats and workshops are the point of sale for all this work.