“India is not just a market for export, it is much more…”
“My country ends at my doorstep…”
“The entire world is watching the Indian Prime Minister for his next move. He seems to be a game changer. Earlier, everything was static. Now, it seems from media reports that at least changes are happening in India”
Recently, I had the opportunity of catching up with Giancarlo Lamio, the former Italian Trade Commissioner toIndia, over a cup of coffee. He and I go back a long way in our association with the Italian Government. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Milan (Italy) after ten long years and the joy of recounting the years was so much that I missed my trans-city train!
Giancarlo Lamio works for ITA (Italian Trade Agency), a Government Agency in charge of promoting Made in Italy and assisting Italian companies in expanding to foreign markets. ITA has a network of offices around the world thereby having given him the opportunity of being posted abroad many times and amongst those places was also India (from September 2005 till September 2008). Nowadays he works in the ITA office in Milan.
His brief description of his three year stay in India was “Challenging, exciting, most interesting, too short!”
According to him, the challenges he faced in India vis-à-vis life in Italy were several: from day to day life organization to cultural aspects to adapting to the climate, managing relationships with people and trying to grasp working attitudes in India.
“My country ends at my doorstep…”According to Mr. Lamio, this sums up the attitude of the normal public in India thus contributing to clean houses and dirty roads
In his words, India was “More than an impression….everything was a discovery, arriving from the posting in a small country (Chile), culturally and ethnically close to Europe and landing in such a continent was quite a shock at the beginning, but on the other hand a beautiful challenge to face with an open mind. Whatever we did and learnt, there was always more to do, to learn or to discover in India. I believe that Indians invented the best definition to describe their country: Incredible India!”
I was touched when I came to know that his wife and three lovely young children (no longer so young after 10 years!) became so attached to India that they wept when they left to go back to Italy.
On the idea of Italian companies entering India, he opines “Any company with a vision of the future must have the Indian market as a target to face sooner or later…better sooner! India, like China, Russia or USA is a continental market able to offer huge opportunities; of course such a continental dimension and its peculiarities make India a place not for beginners. To be successful in India you need to invest lot of time and a good amount of resources. Eventually you have to think of India mainly to explore and enter its internal market. India is not just a platform for export”.
After Mr. Lamio vouched for his belief in “Incredible India” I felt on safer ground as an Indian, safe enough to ask him on his views on drawbacks and difficulties in India, business or otherwise. “For living: climate, health condition (malaria, dengue etc.), and pollution in big cities is not so great (dangerous also for Indians!); for doing business: market access difficulties, large dimension of the market, with many cultural and social differences”
And his quip on India as the coffee cup went from hot to lukewarm to cold was “India is a fast growing country but changing slowly: even if “western” habits and models are penetrating India, Indian people remain very much attached to their culture and traditions, and this I think is very good!”
