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I rememeber in 90s, local mid-level managers who worked for MNC in PRC tend to like their SKR bosses and frequently hated TW bosses simply because cultural over

I rememeber in 90s, local mid-level managers who worked for MNC in PRC tend to like their SKR bosses and frequently hated TW bosses simply because cultural overlap allowed them to push harder. With SKR they could at least feign ignorance with language barrier but TBH still got their work done. I can imagine shitshow of having language barrier and still not meeting KPIs because they're not cross culture competent. Anyway Tata feels like a good fit, always felt like matter of time before audit/tax or political shenanigans drive foreign electronics assemblers out and eventually consolidate under India champions. Still seems a little premature, but I remember numbers last year that 2500/12000 registered forreign companies closed Indian operations since mid 10s, so maybe it's time for India chaebols to take over.

alephnerd 3y ago
> worked for MNC in PRC tend to like their SKR bosses and frequently hated TW bosses simply because cultural overlap allowed them to push harder. With SKR they could at least feign ignorance with language barrier but TBH still got their work done Haha yep, I've heard similar stories in Vietnam as well. Idk why but Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean management culture is absolutely atrocious compared to Japanese+SK management culture. All of them share equally shitty work cultures, but at least the Japanese+SK ones actually tried to train people from scratch. I really don't know why Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean companies don't do that as well. > always felt like matter of time before audit/tax or political shenanigans drive foreign electronics assemblers out and eventually consolidate under India champions Ehn, India's a federal system so financial+political shenanigans are highly dependent on the state's political and business culture. It's the same in PRC ofc, with the administration in Guangdong/Zhejiang/Fujian being much more competent than the administration in Yunnan, Hunan, or Hubei. That said, knowing about these intricacies requires cultural domain experience, which can only be acquired by training+hiring locally, or working with local players. > I remember numbers last year that 2500/12000 registered forreign companies closed Indian operations since mid 10s, so maybe it's time for India chaebols to take over I'd be curious about the breakdown by nationality. After the Doklam standoff in 2017, Indian Federal Regulators began cracking down on Chinese FDI severely (which before 2018 was one of the largest FDI inflows India received), which lead those firms to divest their operations to Indian, Korean, Taiwanese or Japanese corporations. For example, Xiaomi India's operation was originally run from Mainland China itself, but they were forced to sell their India operation to a Taiwanese-Indian consortium, so the only Chinese thing left of Xiaomi India is just the name.
- dirtyid 3y ago
  I use to think it was narcissism of small differences, Sino-sphere cultures hating on each other but from what I hear in Vietnam, they're jerks to everyone. Even PRC firms in Viet did not seem to have _that_ bad of reputation to work for. > India System Does lobbying power from Tata or Adani influence over said politics? Seems like they have competence and connections to take over failed foreign ventures. Not implying it's coordinated, but domestic players have a lot to gain. And probably better cultural experience to run these operations after capital is setup in country. I imagine Indian chaebols have more ability to control unrest, vs in PRC tight relationship with Foxconn essentially delegates crowd control to compliant local govs. >breakdown by nationality This is first article I found: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/business-news/why-mncs-are-quitting-india-1119422.html https://www.deccanherald.com/business/business-news/why-mncs... >A slew of big names including German retailer Metro AG, Swiss building-materials firm Holcim, US automaker Ford, UK banking major Royal Bank of Scotland, US bikemaker Harley-Davidson and US banking behemoth Citibank have chosen to pull the plug their operations in India or downsize their presence here in recent years. I think SKR took over the GM plant. I'm pretty sure JP expansion in India stalled last few years during covid but reporting last few months seems like SKR + JP is going to give it another go. If they can make it work long term, and hopefully they can, good on them.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > from what I hear in Vietnam, they're jerks to everyone. It seems like the older generation of Taiwanese who came to age in the 70s and 80s have a bit of a superiority complex over the rest of poor Asia. Tbf, Koreans and Japanese do as well (Korean and Japanese investors in ASEAN are total sleezeballs in my experience), but due to manpower constraints they at least try to develop local institutional capacity, while Taiwanese companies could always resort to hiring from within the PRC or the ASEAN Chinese diaspora. > Does lobbying power from Tata or Adani influence over said politics? Business lobbying within India is similar to that which happens in PRC. The same way you'd have local companies that are indirectly connected to local prefecture leaders (eg. The entire Construction industry within China), a similar thing exists in India. That said, a lot of this is highly dependent on industry. High Value Sectors such as Pharmaceuticals, ICT, Petrochemicals, Automotive, Banking, and Green Technology can largely bypass all the local lobbying bullshit because the state and federal regulators for those tend to have domain experience because of 40-50 years of regulatory harmonization thanks to guidance from Japan (via the ADB), US (via the WB and Diaspora Academics), SK (via Look South), Israel (mostly under the radar but Israeli advisors are pretty prominent within Indian policymaking circles), and Australia (Australia 2035). That said, the industries listed above tend to not hire as much. In labor heavy industries such as low skilled manufacturing, assembly, agriculture, construction, mining, etc you will face an extreme amount of lobbying and backroom dealing due to how heavily dependent such industries are to local laws and regulations, and also because they directly impact actual voters, plus direct action is a very common occurrence (often with tacit support from the local opposition - could be from any party be it BJP, INC, AAP, etc). That said, this happens A LOT in China as well, it just isn't noticed in English media because any coverage of such events would be in Mandarin and on Chinese platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, etc, while Indian coverage surrounding labor strife will occur in English on western platforms like FB, IG, etc. Tl;dr - in my experience institutional and business norms in the PRC and India are actually pretty similar. In some cases, Chinese regulation is better than Indian ones but in other cases Indian regulations trump Chinese ones (VERY industry dependent) > US automaker Ford, UK banking major Royal Bank of Scotland, US bikemaker Harley-Davidson and US banking behemoth Citibank have chosen to pull the plug their operations in India or downsize their presence here in recent years. The US companies mentioned are divesting because there's an ongoing trade war between India and US (US wants India to open the agriculture sector to American imports, Indian politicians obviously don't want that as it undermines a critical voting block). This has lead to "India applied retaliatory tariffs of an additional 10% to 25%" on American goods [0]. There is a similar trade war going on with the UK as well. Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore on the other hand have implemented free trade agreements with India years ago and Israel+France have had economic pacts since the early 2000s, so unsurprisingly it's MNCs from these countries that tend to have an oversized impact in India (though within the ICT sector American companies still remain strong because of the point I made above). In my experience, Japanese involvement hasn't really stopped in India (in fact it seems to keep growing). It's just not visible if you don't work in infrastructure - Japanese MNCs tend to dominate in Green Tech and Infrastructure projects such as the highway system, hydrogen cell R&D, automotive, and the train electrification project (already at 80% due to Pandemic era construction). Whenever I'd visit India, I'd often see highways with signs saying "Built courtesy of grants from the Government of Japan". This isn't to say that doing business as an MNC in India is easy - it isn't - but if you follow the right path (for example, make a Singapore, Mauritius, or UAE based corporation that has a majority ownership stake of the Indian subsidiary) it's not as difficult. Most Asian countries have done that for FDI within India, but less adept American companies seemed to have a preference and more experience with running operations from HK instead of SG. What HK is to PRC, that's what SG, Marutius, and UAE are to India. [0] - https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF10384.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF10384.pdf

alephnerd 3y ago

> worked for MNC in PRC tend to like their SKR bosses and frequently hated TW bosses simply because cultural overlap allowed them to push harder. With SKR they could at least feign ignorance with language barrier but TBH still got their work done Haha yep, I've heard similar stories in Vietnam as well. Idk why but Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean management culture is absolutely atrocious compared to Japanese+SK management culture. All of them share equally shitty work cultures, but at least the Japanese+SK ones actually tried to train people from scratch. I really don't know why Taiwanese/Malaysian/Singaporean companies don't do that as well. > always felt like matter of time before audit/tax or political shenanigans drive foreign electronics assemblers out and eventually consolidate under India champions Ehn, India's a federal system so financial+political shenanigans are highly dependent on the state's political and business culture. It's the same in PRC ofc, with the administration in Guangdong/Zhejiang/Fujian being much more competent than the administration in Yunnan, Hunan, or Hubei. That said, knowing about these intricacies requires cultural domain experience, which can only be acquired by training+hiring locally, or working with local players. > I remember numbers last year that 2500/12000 registered forreign companies closed Indian operations since mid 10s, so maybe it's time for India chaebols to take over I'd be curious about the breakdown by nationality. After the Doklam standoff in 2017, Indian Federal Regulators began cracking down on Chinese FDI severely (which before 2018 was one of the largest FDI inflows India received), which lead those firms to divest their operations to Indian, Korean, Taiwanese or Japanese corporations. For example, Xiaomi India's operation was originally run from Mainland China itself, but they were forced to sell their India operation to a Taiwanese-Indian consortium, so the only Chinese thing left of Xiaomi India is just the name.

dirtyid 3y ago
I use to think it was narcissism of small differences, Sino-sphere cultures hating on each other but from what I hear in Vietnam, they're jerks to everyone. Even PRC firms in Viet did not seem to have _that_ bad of reputation to work for. > India System Does lobbying power from Tata or Adani influence over said politics? Seems like they have competence and connections to take over failed foreign ventures. Not implying it's coordinated, but domestic players have a lot to gain. And probably better cultural experience to run these operations after capital is setup in country. I imagine Indian chaebols have more ability to control unrest, vs in PRC tight relationship with Foxconn essentially delegates crowd control to compliant local govs. >breakdown by nationality This is first article I found: https://www.deccanherald.com/business/business-news/why-mncs-are-quitting-india-1119422.html https://www.deccanherald.com/business/business-news/why-mncs... >A slew of big names including German retailer Metro AG, Swiss building-materials firm Holcim, US automaker Ford, UK banking major Royal Bank of Scotland, US bikemaker Harley-Davidson and US banking behemoth Citibank have chosen to pull the plug their operations in India or downsize their presence here in recent years. I think SKR took over the GM plant. I'm pretty sure JP expansion in India stalled last few years during covid but reporting last few months seems like SKR + JP is going to give it another go. If they can make it work long term, and hopefully they can, good on them.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > from what I hear in Vietnam, they're jerks to everyone. It seems like the older generation of Taiwanese who came to age in the 70s and 80s have a bit of a superiority complex over the rest of poor Asia. Tbf, Koreans and Japanese do as well (Korean and Japanese investors in ASEAN are total sleezeballs in my experience), but due to manpower constraints they at least try to develop local institutional capacity, while Taiwanese companies could always resort to hiring from within the PRC or the ASEAN Chinese diaspora. > Does lobbying power from Tata or Adani influence over said politics? Business lobbying within India is similar to that which happens in PRC. The same way you'd have local companies that are indirectly connected to local prefecture leaders (eg. The entire Construction industry within China), a similar thing exists in India. That said, a lot of this is highly dependent on industry. High Value Sectors such as Pharmaceuticals, ICT, Petrochemicals, Automotive, Banking, and Green Technology can largely bypass all the local lobbying bullshit because the state and federal regulators for those tend to have domain experience because of 40-50 years of regulatory harmonization thanks to guidance from Japan (via the ADB), US (via the WB and Diaspora Academics), SK (via Look South), Israel (mostly under the radar but Israeli advisors are pretty prominent within Indian policymaking circles), and Australia (Australia 2035). That said, the industries listed above tend to not hire as much. In labor heavy industries such as low skilled manufacturing, assembly, agriculture, construction, mining, etc you will face an extreme amount of lobbying and backroom dealing due to how heavily dependent such industries are to local laws and regulations, and also because they directly impact actual voters, plus direct action is a very common occurrence (often with tacit support from the local opposition - could be from any party be it BJP, INC, AAP, etc). That said, this happens A LOT in China as well, it just isn't noticed in English media because any coverage of such events would be in Mandarin and on Chinese platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, etc, while Indian coverage surrounding labor strife will occur in English on western platforms like FB, IG, etc. Tl;dr - in my experience institutional and business norms in the PRC and India are actually pretty similar. In some cases, Chinese regulation is better than Indian ones but in other cases Indian regulations trump Chinese ones (VERY industry dependent) > US automaker Ford, UK banking major Royal Bank of Scotland, US bikemaker Harley-Davidson and US banking behemoth Citibank have chosen to pull the plug their operations in India or downsize their presence here in recent years. The US companies mentioned are divesting because there's an ongoing trade war between India and US (US wants India to open the agriculture sector to American imports, Indian politicians obviously don't want that as it undermines a critical voting block). This has lead to "India applied retaliatory tariffs of an additional 10% to 25%" on American goods [0]. There is a similar trade war going on with the UK as well. Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore on the other hand have implemented free trade agreements with India years ago and Israel+France have had economic pacts since the early 2000s, so unsurprisingly it's MNCs from these countries that tend to have an oversized impact in India (though within the ICT sector American companies still remain strong because of the point I made above). In my experience, Japanese involvement hasn't really stopped in India (in fact it seems to keep growing). It's just not visible if you don't work in infrastructure - Japanese MNCs tend to dominate in Green Tech and Infrastructure projects such as the highway system, hydrogen cell R&D, automotive, and the train electrification project (already at 80% due to Pandemic era construction). Whenever I'd visit India, I'd often see highways with signs saying "Built courtesy of grants from the Government of Japan". This isn't to say that doing business as an MNC in India is easy - it isn't - but if you follow the right path (for example, make a Singapore, Mauritius, or UAE based corporation that has a majority ownership stake of the Indian subsidiary) it's not as difficult. Most Asian countries have done that for FDI within India, but less adept American companies seemed to have a preference and more experience with running operations from HK instead of SG. What HK is to PRC, that's what SG, Marutius, and UAE are to India. [0] - https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF10384.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF10384.pdf