Eastward Ho!
India has become the land of opportunity for many Westerners who’ve set up businesses here, says Chitra Papnai
It was a huge leap into the unknown for Briton Richard McCallum. He came to India as a highflier for Cathay Pacific, looking after the airline’s northern India office. But after criss-crossing the country he decided to take to the air in a different way — he started an adventure tourism company, Flying Fox, that takes people whizzing through the air on ultra-strong metal cables at Neemrana Fort.
Lalita de Goederen-van Lamsweerde and her husband Alexander de Goederen wanted to live away from their home country Holland for a few years and — after ruling out London and Paris — finally settled on Delhi. Lalita, who was in public relations in Amsterdam, thought she’d take a transfer in Burson-Marsteller but changed course dramatically once she reached India and decided to go into business. Finding a gap in the market, she has opened a 900sq ft, two-storey café in Gurgaon that focuses mainly on different varieties of bagels. Says Lalita: “I thought I would introduce authentic bagels which people here may not have had before.”
McCallum and Lalita are part of a growing new tribe: westerners who are travelling the globe scouting for opportunity, and who’ve ended up in India. Says McCallum: “Travelling around the country, it didn’t take long to notice the gigantic emerging market and phenomenal growth opportunities here. Adventure tourism is growing by 40 per cent annually. It made sense to stay.”
Take a look at French designer couple Amaury Watine and Stephanie Bonduelle, who launched a lifestyle products and design store called Ultrastore few months ago in Delhi’s Hauz Khas Village.
Watine had visited India a few years ago when he was working in a furniture designing company and had immediately decided that the growing middle class and the building boom combined would throw up plenty of opportunities for interior designers here. So he has left a partner behind in Paris to look after his company, Ultra-Confidentiel and moved to India. Ultra-Confidentiel’s team of designers offers a range of design services for offices, shops, showrooms, restaurants and exhibitions. Watine now aims to open more stores in places like Bangalore and Mumbai.
Similarly, Alecca Carrano was a successful fashion designer who plied her trade in different parts of the world from the Middle East to New York. She moved to Delhi and is now running a store in Sunder Nagar which sells her high end ready to wear line. Now she’s looking at making a debut in the Indian market with her new local-sounding label Tandoori. “It will have tops, dresses and wraps made in cotton or viscose Lycra,” says Alecca.
The fact is that India’s explosive economic boom of the last five years has thrown up an extraordinary array of opportunities — both for jobs and businesses — that never existed before. Take, for instance, Lalita’s husband Alexander de Goederen who walked almost immediately into a job with real estate company DTZ International after getting to Delhi.
After getting a hang of the Indian real estate market he swiftly branched out on his own and launched a real estate company called BRICKS INDIA. Alexander figured that the commercial market had been tied up by the bigger real estate firms so he’s focusing on the residential market.
It was much the same story for Noreen van Holstein and Jack Leenars, another Dutch couple who’ve been in India for a few years. Leenars initially came to India as a journalist for leading Dutch newspaper Telegraaf.
He and wife Noreen soon sensed that it would be worth trying to do something different in India. So now Noreen runs an advertising company Cards4U that specialises in making postcards with advertisements on them that are put on display in cafes, bars and restaurants. And Leenars has got on his bike and is giving guided bicycle tours in Old Delhi. “Cycling is the best way to explore a city, its people and culture. Since I’m Dutch, cycling is in my blood,’’ he explains.
But you can have ups and downs and false starts even in a growing economy and that’s what Aleksandr Melnikov a Russian entrepreneur turned restaurateur discovered. Mel-nikov came to India with the idea of exporting leather goods from here to Russia but the business failed to take off.
But he was on the lookout for business opportunities and decided that there was a gap in the market that he could fill: for a restaurant serving Russian food. His restaurant Bline in Delhi has a mix of about 70 per cent Indians and 30 per cent foreigners.
Who are these foreigners who’ve spotted opportunity and made their home in India? The fact is they’re a mixed bunch. Melnikov, 52, was in garment business before he arrived in India and Carrano, who’s in her early 40s, had worked as a designer around the world.
But, many of the others have almost no experience in their new chosen lines of business. Take Lalita, who just turned 30, and whose son was born in India recently. In Amsterdam she had worked as a communication specialist for Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen where she got to see the hospitality business from close quarters. “Though I had gathered some experience of the hospitality business, switching tracks from working as a PR executive to a restaurateur was a big plunge.”
Is it tough living so far from home? India has come a long way in the last decade and the fact is that it’s not as cut-off from the world as it once was. Says Leenar: “I don’t miss anything. India is changing fast and everything is available here.”
Watine and Bonduelle grumble that French food isn’t easily available here. But they’ve partly solved that problem by finding a great cook who can rustle up something close to what they like eating.
Inevitably, there are grouses about doing business. McCallum (his company specialises in ziplining which involves harnessing people to strong cables and taking them through the air from one point to another), advises that it’s best to find a good charted accountant and a good lawyer and cling to them for dear life. Starting a business requires a remarkable number of clearances and it can be a minefield for outsiders who don’t know their way around. For instance, it took Lalita nearly one year to get her business visa.
And interestingly enough, many say they’d rather live in India than China — one important reason being the language. Carrano, for instance, says she was charmed by India almost from the word go and decided to move here with her architect husband and three daughters. “I was at ease with the chaos and the noise and felt it was all familiar. We were more attracted to Indian culture and the language was not a barrier.”
It must be said that the new breed of expats don’t live in a ghetto like foreigners who were posted here by rich companies once did. In Delhi, they’ve moved from the smartest colonies like Sunder Nagar, Jor Bagh and Golf Links which were once the only places where expats would live. Now, as they try to build businesses, they’ve moved to more modest areas all over town. Also, their friends tend to be a mix of Indians and other foreigners living here.
McCallum takes short breaks and loves returning to the UK for holidays but he considers Delhi home — for the time being. Says McCallum: “We have a delightful, happy lifestyle here and I can see us remaining for several years. We have a 16-month-old daughter, Ava, who was born at Delhi’s Apollo Hospital, and a second baby is on the way.”
Having said that, he does sometimes get disillusioned by the traffic and Delhi’s growing water and power problems. But he isn’t thinking of leaving. “Maybe we’ll relocate to Jodhpur or Jaipur where we hope to open new Flying Fox sites in coming years,” he says.
In fact, despite the pollution and the power problems nobody’s leaving anytime soon. That’s because they know that, amazingly enough, India right now is the Eldorado and the land of opportunity.
thats quite inevitable. a few decades down, India will possibly be like US of A, with people all over the world settling here.
