How hungry are you?

 

In this flat, wired world, it has become imperative for countries to ‘be as nimble as thy neighbour’. Australian entrepreneurs today need to study the business management and entrepreneurial practices of their neighbours in Asia and learn some of the secrets of their remarkable successes.

 

So, what lessons can we learn from Indian entrepreneurs?

 

If necessity is the mother of all innovation and entrepreneurship, you could say that India has this raw material in abundance. A culture of survival of the fittest together with the relentless obsession with success and wealth creation has created a business environment that operates at fever pitch most of the time. Despite constraints, such as limited access to capital and lack of education, many Indian entrepreneurs have built world-class organisations in a matter of decades.

 

Think big, think fast and think ahead. This was the mantra followed by Dhirubhai H. Ambani, who rose from humble beginnings as the son of the village school teacher to become chairman of India’s largest private sector company, Reliance. The company was set up with an investment of 15,000 rupees (about $375). Forty-four years later, Reliance has grown into a conglomerate with an annual turnover of over $22 billion. It is the only Indian private sector firm in the Fortune 500 list. The company has also acquired one of the world’s largest groups of shareholders, with over four million investors putting their faith in its stock.

 

Dhirubhai Ambani is now a household name and a role model for every roadside entrepreneur in India. He had vision, a sharp nose for profit, hawk-eyed focus on margins and the relentless pursuit of a dream to build India’s largest company for the masses. He created an unsurpassable icon in the Indian corporate landscape.

 

It has been proven time and time again that ingenious thinking can overcome any constraint, especially financial. Government grants and financial assistance to entrepreneurs can often serve to dampen the very spirit they are meant to foster. It’s a double-edged sword for entrepreneurs in Australia.

 

Sunny weather, beckoning beaches and a generally relaxed attitude to work has created better lifestyle options for Australian workers, resulting in a severe shortage of dynamic, enthusiastic and skilled workers. Entrepreneurs in Australia could be better supported through access to such human capital.

 

Entrepreneurs in India, on the other hand, have access to a large pool of hungry and talented employees, all desperate to become the next Dhirubhai Ambani. Australian entrepreneurs stand to benefit greatly from expanding their employee base by leveraging this ready pool of talent for their own ventures.

 

Entrepreneurship requires total focus, dedication and passion. In India, business is conducted long into the evening. There are precious few demarcations between ‘family time’ and ‘work time’. Indian entrepreneurs will just as easily take a phone call at 11pm during the week or 9am on a Saturday as they would at 11am on Monday. Business comes first.

 

This does not mean that there is no family time. The reverse is true. As most entrepreneurs have their household chores looked after by home helpers, they have more time than their western counterparts to devote to work and family. Outsourcing domestic chores is one way of buying more time for entrepreneurial pursuits.

 

Entrepreneurship runs in the Indian DNA. It starts early when young children are put to work to bring income for their impoverished families. Risk-taking and opportunism are founded on frugality. Indian entrepreneurs are very good at squeezing as much as they can from every dollar of investment. This is a cultural attribute cultivated over many years of deprivation.

 

In a land of abundance such as Australia, entrepreneurs can often be wasteful in their use of resources. Entrepreneurs need to find creative ways to reduce their cash-burn rate so as to build greater sustainability into their operations. While the “have a go” approach has created success for some, it needs to be supplemented with long-term thinking and diligent planning to pervade Australian business culture even more profoundly.

 

Rohini Kapur is Managing Director of Oyster, a boutique consultancy focused on facilitating cross-border mergers and acquisitions between India and Australia. Oyster has formed a strategic alliance with Business Strategies International to create the BSI India Gateway. [email protected]