My Experiences with NASSCOM delegation to UK and Ireland
Sorry for a long gap between my Blogs as I have been travelling a lot, a week in Delhi for the NASSCOM emerge out conclave (it was just one day but it coincided with my kids vacation and hence took the week off to see Delhi and Agra) and another 10 days in UK as part of the NASSCOM delegation.
Let me try to summarize how the trip went, what I expected out of it and what were the takeaways. We were 17 of us from various SMEs across the length and breadth of India and all had different experiences and expectations w.r.t this UK delegation. As far as I am concerned, this was my first time to UK and even though we had few clients we were never into UK per say and our offerings (Legacy migrations and modernizations) fit the UK market very well but I knew with no knowledge of the local culture, the ways of doing business and more importantly never being there even once, we were definitely not in the perfect position to do business in UK in a way and I am one of those who believes that ‘you do business with people’ and knowing people from the place where you do business, is very critical and paramount for me. This was in a way my main objective to see, look around and understand how business actually runs in that country and any amount of reading, knowing via other medium, internet study in no way equivalent of being present there physically.
I was in London two days ahead of schedule, met couple of my clients, spent time understanding the local people, culture, business and more importantly the commute part – the bus, the tube and the trains. One day I spent on London sightseeing and my honest opinion is I was very very impressed with the local transport of London and something what we can emulate here in traffic choked metros of India. Roads are narrow to in London but most travel by the underground subways what they call TUBE and ofcourse complemented by the Bus and the trains running from suburbs of London to downtown London and the whole system is so traveller friendly imagine me becoming an expert in just an hour and two rides in the Tube. You don’t have to ask a person a thing, all is written and you just have to look around (and ofcourse you need to know English) (please note for those who are travelling to Heathrow and then to London, there is a TUBE which runs from Heathrow to central London and no need to go for those expensive Cabs – yes I hear you – you have luggage, they knew too and they have made space for the same in all TUBEs which run that route – smart planning huh).
Sunday I flew to Dublin (in republic of Ireland) to join the delegation and had planned enough to figure out the buses and the bus route to the hotel. Sorry I can’t say the same thing what I told of TUBE to transport here. Anyways, we had daylong meetings in Ireland with NASSCOM equivalent of Ireland, with few clients, with few expatriates from here who have established over there, lawyers involved either in corporation setup or immigration etc and overall was very informative to an extent to make a smart choice based on those facts whether you like to do business over in Ireland or not and whether you like to setup your European office (whenever you make that decision) in Ireland or not. Overall I was very happy with the outcome as I personally did not have many expectations out of the Ireland visit and for an entrepreneur any information feed is always beneficial as they all play in the mind some day or other while taking a decision or a stand.
Monday night we flew to Glasgow (in Scotland, part of UK) and we were supposed to be having a long day on Tuesday meeting various clients and other associates. I had read on Friday in the telegraph on how England pays a huge amount of tax payers money to Scotland so that it is what is today (This is based on what I read in the paper and disclaimer is I don’t have firsthand knowledge to prove this or disprove this and hence might not be true at all; I will welcome your comments) and with few banks going almost bankrupt, I was wondering what can be the reception as I suspected or feared, the day was a disaster as no one turned up other than few office bearers from the NASSCOM equivalent of Scotland and had a bit of introductions and promises to forward our profiles to the potential companies over there and did a bit of sightseeing but I caught an early flight to London to meet a potential client of mine which worked out for me. Then again such things are bound to happen and generally getting the ideal situations is almost zero and who understands this better then the entrepreneurs. This reminds me of what Bagchi talks about how Watson had a unexpected customer out of his wife’s club meeting and what IBM is today because of that and hence we should expect and derive opportunities and insights from everything that happens around us irrespective of whether we planned that or happened accidentally.
Anyways, on Tuesday night we were all in London to embark rather a very demanding schedule from Wednesday onwards. Wednesday morning started with a meeting of NASSCOM equivalent of UK or London what is called Intellect and has some great members, there were few companies from London area, lawyers, immigration experts, auditors, etc and had a great time. We even had speed dating, a concept of NASSCOM delegates (us) and UK based companies talking to each other one after the other trying to explore where both have opportunities to work together which went very well. Overall at the end of the end we had great sessions and lot of first hand information about how to do business in London, where to start and how to start and what all we should be careful of (regulations and taxes) and what all we need to take care etc and we came out very satisfied and happy and it made up for all we lost in Scotland in a way. We also went to London Stock Exchange and we had got this special permission to go inside and we had one of the presidents talking to us and how one can get listed there even if we are SME etc and they set pur aspirations much higher. The greatest moment of all was Som Mittal (president of NASSCOM) was with us whole day and we all have even dinner together in an Italian restaurant. Getting to know Som so closely and so well was my real highlight of the day. He is very impressive the way he delivers his speech and the way he works with his counterparts. I was very impressed with him.
Wednesday we went to IBM office in Hershley, an hour drive from Central London. They explained that as the home of IBM CICS and also the birth place of IBM Websphere MQ and to Java some extent. They shared some of the best practices of IBM worldwide and how they work with IBM Beijing and IBM Bangalore on a very close relationship. They also talked about their new ventures w.r.t Facebook and mobile technologies all written in J2ME. They explained how a almost dead product was given to them when they started and how they converted that into a mainstream product and is now responsible for a very good part of the global revenues of IBM. Then we drove to Microsoft which is another hour drive from there and is located in Thames Valley, a beautiful place and an hour or less drive from London and is in a place called Reading (pronounced as Redding). We met a senior manager over there and he talked about the complete set of software offerings Microsoft has and dealt more on the software + services offerings which is new from the MS stables and he even mentioned to check the MS website by the end of the month as they have a new offerings and a new announcement to make. He explained how software just as a application or just as a SaaS model won’t be viable in the coming days and it is the combination of these two is crucial and MS offerings of S+S is going to be the future. We also met one from the vendor connection program and he talked about how Indian companies can leverage MS UK and he explained his experience with working with other IT biggies from India. Then we actually went to Reading and we met a corporate lawyer associates who gave a complete run down of how to set up a office in Thames Valley and we also met the Indo-UK business council and I had collected enough information and contacts and felt like I could have started the business from that day in the UK and could have even got few clients J
Friday was relatively less of a rush; we met to a end to end service provider of the whole services of corporation setup, auditor, tax, immigration and related matters. Information was very helpful and I get the information I collected throughout this trip is very invaluable and I don’t think I would have got this info this easily even if I had spent weeks if not months researching. Post lunch we had a short meet and we dispersed and I spent some time shopping a bit or more walking up & down the Oxford street which is a major shopping street (akin to say Brigade road in Bangalore just 10 times bigger I guess) and then off to India on Saturday.
Unexpected outcome of the whole event has been the networking among we the delegates itself and the friendship we built among ourselves and the information sharing we did among ourselves some of the best practices etc. I guess I learnt a lot of stuff which I would have not got otherwise and something which I can apply in the day today running the organization. The chemistry worked very well and was the most unexpected sweet outcome of the delegation. Also I like to thank Akansha and Amit who represented NASSCOM and were very helpful and had worked very hard to make this a success. Thank you each of the delegates for making my trip very memorable and to be frank I learnt a lot in these nine days which otherwise would have taken lot more time and few more costly mistakes for sure.
Ofcourse you spend all your time praising the whole thing and if you don’t mention few shortcomings, the whole summary will be like food without salt – wont it be? J J
I felt we can do little fine tuning here and there and teh time spent would have been much more worthwhile. Some of the things I thought were,
- Little more time conscious from all of us
- If NASSCOM had informed its equivalent in other countries to inform about us (the delegate companies) and then in turn those companies to read the profile and actually come and meet us whenever there is a good match
- Somehow overcoming the Scotland Fiasco
- May be sessions from those Indian companies who have been successfully established their business in UK and sharing their experiences and the good, bad and the ugly things
- May be few sessions from people who can explain how to do business especially from a vendor point of view
Overall was a very good trip and yes I did achieve my objectives and like to take this opportunity to thank NASSCOM for arranging one and my fellow delegates who enriched my experience over there.
Manjunath M Gowda
S7 Software
