1-12-2008

After a restful late morning, Drew and I visited a local Vodaphone dealer behind the Ginger Hotel to add more minutes onto her prepaid phone. In less than two weeks, Drew developed a close relationship with the shopkeeper’s family through cell phone transactions. When we arrived, I was stunned by their enthusiasm targeted at Drew. I mentioned earlier that Indians are genuinely accommodating folks. This particular family was beyond kind, they offered to let us taste Indian sweets they were selling, greeting us like we were one of their friends, and offered to take us out to an annual holiday festival. Who would have thought a simple business transaction would mature into friendship and then almost to family?

Varma makes the claim that the structure of Indian’s largest trading scale is an unorganized commercial sector committed to serving to the majority of India’s population.

“…Ten million men and women work as street hawkers and vendors, and more than sixty million people are directly dependent on this trade. The organized sector of the economy…employs only 3 per cent of the workforce…almost nine out of ten people—are self-employed.” (Varma 75)

Visiting the vendors puts this picture all into perspective. Every local market vendor along this back alley way sells similar products and services; however, what sets this family a part from the rest is their ability to provide international service. The quality of service they offer is multidimensional like many successful international corporations. Their success factor is their ability to offer the same products across barriers of language and culture. There were instances of translation errors but for the most part Drew and I were able to communicate.

While meeting with this incredible family, I realized our time consuming site visits were right in the backyard of our hotel. International business is more than just multinational corporations setting up shop in various countries or performing operations to fulfill profit margins. Small scale industries that Varma refers to as “grass-roots entrepreneurial energy” are the vendors lined up in the alley we visit. It is their enormous energy that employs 90 percent of India’s economy.