Executives born in India are making their mark on the world stage. Recent governance woes at Gulf hospital operator NMC Health have put an India-born businessman on the map for the wrong reasons.
But the world’s largest diaspora is rising through the ranks at giant tech companies and elsewhere. International influence highlights a dearth of local opportunity.
There’s plenty of bad news. NMC last week admitted to inaccurately disclosing founder and co-chairman B R Shetty’s shareholding, though the London-listed hospital operator denies claims of misstating profitability.
The saga is reminiscent of Ramesh Tainwala’s 2018 departure as boss of Samsonite, a week after a short-seller claimed the CEO of the Hong Kong-listed company had lied on his resume about his education.
That was part of a broader report alleging inflated earnings which the world’s largest maker of luggage said was “one-sided’.
Allegations of misbehaviour are not confined to international companies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is moving aggressively through British courts to extradite Indian businessmen accused of wrongdoing at home.
Beer baron Vijay Mallya is fighting charges of fraud relating to the collapse of his Kingfisher Airlines. Diamond jeweller Nirav Modi is in a similar position, denying charges relating to a $2 billion fraud at Punjab National Bank.
Overseas successes, though, still outweigh the disappointments. India’s financial elite last month celebrated the appointment of Arvind Krishna as CEO of IBM. India-born executives also lead Adobe, Google-parent Alphabet and Microsoft. The four tech companies have a combined market capitalisation of $2.7 trillion, about the same as India’s gross domestic product. Executives born in India also lead multinationals like Diageo, MasterCard and Reckitt Benckiser.
These advances only serve to highlight the dearth of international investment in India, though. The country is a popular location for back office functions and R&D because labour is cheap and English widely spoken by professionals. Still, foreign direct investment into India trails flows into China.
China-born bosses rarely appear in prominent positions at Western companies, arguably because they have better options at home.
As Indian citizens make more applications for overseas residency schemes, and the elite continue to send their children for overseas education, the country’s growing international business clout accentuates the lack of opportunity at home. — Reuters
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