How to do business in India

1. How to do business in India From a Dutch perspective

2. Mumbai, April 2007 Willem stood in front of the window in his hotel and watched the city lights appear slowly as dusk fell over the city. The street below was crowded with people and traffic passing by during rush hour. While it slowly became dark, the city lights were shedding a dim light on the streets. Willem stared at the lights while lighting a cigarette and sipping a glass of his favourite whiskey.

3. What happened before. He arrived only a few days ago, aiming to strike a deal that would rocket his personal career within his company. The past few days he had spend by negotiating with representatives from the Indian company. Although the talks started very friendly and relaxed with many friendly chats about all sorts of subjects, to Willem they seemed to drag on and little time was left to discuss business. Whenever they did start to talk about business it was without any concrete results. Whenever a decision was made, the process was further delayed because of the necessity of going back to their senior colleagues for approval. However, tomorrow was his last day before catching the plane back to Amsterdam and being optimistic he expected to close the deal tomorrow. In order to be fresh and sharp for the meeting, Willem and his colleague kindly rejected an invitation from one of the senior Indian representatives to visit his family and attend the wedding of one of his sons this evening.

4. The meeting. That day the meeting started at 9:30. Like any other meeting, Willem entered the room with his colleague and started to shake hands from those who were in the room walking clockwise around the table. Like every past meeting he immediately sensed an uncomfortable feeling at the attendants. Knowing that it is not common in India for men to shake hands with women he always waited till the woman in the room made the approach. Although it appeared that this was appreciated, there seemed to be tension among the traditional Indian attendants when they shook hands.

5. The end Feeling uncomfortable about the start of the meeting, Willem tried to speed up the outstanding issues and skipped the smaller details within the deal. Addressing them informal in an attempt to create a friendly atmosphere he sensed a diminishing amount of trust on the other side. This was strengthened by the fact that throughout the meeting at several occasions his counterparts started to shake their heads from side to side like they absolutely did not agree with his points of view. Likewise Willem started to question the competence and willingness to strike a deal at his counterparts. Although the frequently confirmed his statements by answering yes on all the questions, he really doubted if this was sincere. While the meeting dragged on there was a diminishing amount of trust on both sides and finally, when Willem left for the airport, the goodbye was very friendly but a deal seemed to be further away then ever before.