Today class was about the Indian Service Industry and Business Opportunities. The speaker was much easier to understand than some of the others. We covered Healthcare, Hotel and Tourism, IT Enables Services, the Insurance Industry, the Media and Entertainment Industry, Retail, Telecom, and Aviation. She was very well informed and gave many people ideas of areas to invest.

Next I tried in vane to update my blog. The computers went down as I was finishing my blog and I lost a good portion of it. That is so frustrating. We then headed out to visit Larsen and Toubro - L & T. It definitely increased my confidence in the ability of this country to house businesses that can overcome the major infrastructure issues that are so apparent as we have interacted with different parts of this city.

The head of Emsys Operations hosted our visit. They really rolled out the red carpet. We started out with a buffet that included the best food I've had since I got here. The head of HR sat at our table, which allowed us to ask a lot of questions about their practices. They have very low turnover, which isn't surprising. But, he said the thing he is most proud of is that they were able to get rid of the unions that use to exist at the company by incorporating the types of employee relations issues that make employees happy. They pay a good wage, which was their employees top concern. They also began to only employee people that graduated from college. He said they have a better level of expectations and perform at a high quality level.

We toured their technology division, which creates games for cell phones. One of the workers showed us a game he was working on. I was really interested in the division that creates software and could have spent an hour talking to this man about what it takes to outsource something from the US to here, but there was not enough time. I really enjoyed the part of the tour where they showed us how they are creating state of the art meters, because I could relate this back to Duluth. Duluth just voted to replace all of the home meters that have to be read by individual meter readers with computerized meters that can be accessed from a centralized base. The old way of reading meters has been around for 100 years and just when we decided to jump into the new era, I got to visit a plant that is making them. How exciting is that!

While walking from building to building, I walked with the host and had the opportunity to ask many questions. One of them pertained to the availability of clean water. He said this is a major issue in India and their company has built salination plants to take water from the ocean and make it usable for human consumption. The problem they are having is making it accessable to the everyday person through the regular tap in their homes. That is one of the stumbling blocks they are going to have to address at some point in the future. When people come to visit the plant, they make sure there is plenty of water in bottles, so the clients don't feel the sense of contaminated water and the ability to find good water. The electrical supply is also an issue, especially when they need a constant supply of energy to test their equipment. They have set up separate in-house energy supplies to alleveate this concern.

They also have a major division that is dedicated to making equipment for the healthcare industry. He told us their major problem was the lack of having someone in the states that could translate the requirements into specifications. They started sending Indians to the US to work with companies to develop the specs and their business increased significantly. They also had to work on their marketing / brochure systems. This man was so open and honest with what has occurred over his tenure that the level of trust seemed to just build. I can see how people from all over the globe would be willing to send work to this company.

Pavan Varma, in Being Indian, talks about the "messy democracy" within India. Our host gave us an indication as to how messy it was. He said early on the company had to get a license for everything they did. They couldn't do anything, even design a cup and saucer, without getting a license. But, with the major renovations to their system, it has gotten better. The problem still remains with the legal system and how long it takes to get through the courts, especially when anyone seems to be able to sue for just about anything. I asked about the ability to use Eminent Domain to obtain land for road contruction and that doesn't seem to help, because the people can still tie them up in the courts.

I could go on and on about this company and the information we gained, but that would make for too long of a blog. So hopefully you got the picture to some extent. The problem with this whole picture is that there are little pockets of companies that have seen the Ten Flattners contribute to the success of their companies. When I left this company and came back to reality with the larger part of India, I became frustrated again. Instead of going shopping or reading my book, I decided to go to the Institute to work on my blogs. When I got there, the internet was not accessable. It was down. I had to try and find someone to work on it. I spent 45 minutes waiting and finally gave up and went back to the hotel. I'm not use to the variation in internet availability and thought India with all its global recognition for IT would have top of the line internet speed and internet availability.

I went back to the hotel, found Teresa and went shopping. I guess if I can't work, I might as well contribute to the local economy.