Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Another Blog of Interest on Legal Process Outsourcing
My legal colleagues at LawScribe, Inc. have called my attention to a blog that might interest LPO followers: http://blog.law-scribe.com/. LawScribe will be presenting several panel discussions at the LegalTech2007 West Coast conference on June 20-21, 2007 at the Los Angeles Convention Center -- these sessions are likely to garner more attention to the LPO phenomenon. Look for speakers Mark Ross and LawScribe CEO Kunoor Chopra at the conference.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
India Blog Morphs into LPO Network (Newsletter)
Faithful readers of this blog will want to know that my enthusiasm after visiting India has evolved into serious study of the legal process outsourcing (LPO) industry, particularly as it involves outsourcing of legal work from the US to India. To further knowledge of the subject, I started LPO Network, a free electronic newsletter for those interested in the issue. The first issue launched on May 1, 2007 and is posted on the website http://www.legalprocessoutsourcingnetwork.com/ so take a look and sign up for future issues. In the May issue, there are articles on the economic predictions for legal job migration to India, and on hiring lawyers in LPOs, plus articles on maintaining data security within the LPO. Aphelion Legal Solutions, an India and Houston TX-based LPO is profiled as well; every month there will be another LPO profiled. Next month, look forward to articles on training lawyers in Indian LPOs.
I am interested in all submissions, from Indian and US lawyers, from those within the LPO industry and those considering outsourcing their legal work. Perspectives from those who have used Indian LPO providers are especially welcome. Please direct your proposed articles and feedback to me at alnegroni@corpriskadvisors.com.
I am interested in all submissions, from Indian and US lawyers, from those within the LPO industry and those considering outsourcing their legal work. Perspectives from those who have used Indian LPO providers are especially welcome. Please direct your proposed articles and feedback to me at alnegroni@corpriskadvisors.com.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
With Executives from Bodhi Global Services, Ltd. (a Mumbai & NY based LPO)
This photo shows (left to right) me with Jerry Buckley of Buckley Kolar LLP and Arihant Patni, CEO of Bodhi Global Services, and Ed Burke, President, Bodhi Global Services, during Arihant and Ed's visit to Washington DC on March 2, 2007.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
DOs & DON’Ts FOR BUSINESS TRAVEL IN INDIA
I’m not an expert on India travel, but hope my thoughts might help others, I’ll list my do's and don'ts. These are based on my own experiences, and should be read with that in mind. I traveled to India in February 2007 for 16 days. I am a middle-aged American female lawyer, reasonably well-traveled, and in good health. I speak English plus some French and Spanish (neither of which were used on this trip). My air travel (roundtrip Washington DC) was in coach class on British Airways, and my in-country air travel was on Jet Airways (coach class). I stayed in 5-star hotels in Bangalore, Mumbai, Jaipur and Delhi. All hotels provided airport pickup and drop-off, and had in-house car-hire services, which I used (supplemented by taxis in Mumbai). All my business contacts and clients sent chauffered cars to pick me up and return me to my hotel, and when dining out, the drivers parked and waited for me. With these caveats and my background, in mind, here are my observations (but if you’ve been in India before, or if you are Indian, or speak Hindi or if you’re in India for a tourist adventure, rather than business, this list might not be appropriate for you…).
My Top 10 “Do” list:
1. Do take taxis or private cars (either from the hotel or those booked with reputable taxi companies) rather than walk in the cities, unless you know the area. On foot, you will likely be followed by auto-rickshaws, taxis and other vehicles, whose drivers honk incessantly to persuade you to accept a ride.
2. Do drink only bottled water that is provided by hotels and restaurants, and make sure the cap is sealed when the bottle is presented to you. Use this water for everything, including tooth-brushing. If you get a Coke or a soda, make sure it is served in a closed can and don’t take ice in it (or in any drink).
3. Do accept the exceptional Indian hospitality you will find everywhere. Your Indian hosts want your visit to be pleasant and successful and go out of their way to make sure it is. Put your skepticism aside – Indian hospitality is the real thing (and it’s wonderful).
4. Do bring along heaps of business and professional cards – everyone will ask for one and will offer you one. Even when you are meeting 10 people from the same company in the same room, you’ll be expected to give each person a card.
5. Do try and remember the names of the people you meet and address them by name – most of the Indian businesspeople I met used my first name (and expected me to use theirs) right away.
6. Do study up the companies you visit before you get there – they’re likely to make a big effort to prepare for your visit and it’s only reasonable for you to learn about them in advance.
7. Do take a day or two out of your schedule to see tourist sites or simply enjoy the city or town you’re in. Simply looking out a car window in India is more interesting than any movie you’ve ever seen if you haven’t been here before. Hire a guide if you’re especially interested in art or history – they’re knowledgeable and inexpensive and love to demonstrate their knowledge.
8. Do talk to strangers. I met interesting and friendly people in airports, on trains, in hotels, and even on the street. I never felt threatened or intimidated and everyone I met with a smile and a hello seemed eager to engage in conversation.
9. Do dress modestly if you are female and professionally (not in shorts, even when it’s hot) if you’re male. Indian ladies have a wonderful and colorful look with their loose bright sarees, but these garments are designed to cover a lot of the body. Form-fitting clothes on women just aren’t seen (except perhaps in Western-style nightclubs). In the cities, men don’t wear shorts, t-shirts, baseball caps, or sandals. Although the dress code is casual, it’s also modest and businesslike.
10. Do keep an open mind – you may be frustrated by the apparent contradictions you face everyday, but this is an ancient country with a complex history and there’s simply no way to figure out “what’s what” on a short business trip. So et go of any preconceived ideas about what a business trip should be, and accept that India is very different from Indiana.
And my Top 10 “Don’ts” are:
1. Don’t neglect to prepare for your India trip with more attention that you might give if traveling elsewhere. For example, Americans need a visa (and a documented business purpose to obtain a business visa valid for 6 months), and you’ll probably also need shots for hepatitis, typhoid fever, and perhaps tetanus, and pills for malaria, diarrhea and other potential illnesses. Bring along special foods you can’t live without (none of my 5-star hotels had a convenience store) and special toiletry items, plus loads of hand sanitizer. Don’t forget your camera and computer and all the cords, cables, converters, chargers and adapters you’ll need for plugging it in. Figure out how to get all your hand-carried items into a single (1) carry-on.
2. Don’t be late for meetings – although I was told that Indians are routinely about 30 minutes late for everything, I found all my Indian hosts to be not only punctual but often quite early.
3. Don’t over-schedule yourself. It takes 30-90 minutes to reach some offices from downtown city hotels because traffic is heavy and unpredictable. I would aim for one meeting a day rather than two if it’s possible, unless the second meeting is a dinner meeting or something late in the evening. By US standards, Indians eat dinner on the late side (8-9pm or later).
4. Don’t engage in public displays of affection (PDA) with members of the opposite sex. You often see men and boys holding hands or with their arms draped around each others’ shoulders, and you sometimes see women walking arm-in-arm, but rarely do men and women touch in public and I never saw any overt displays of affection between men and women, which I assume means PDA isn’t appropriate.
5. Don’t give money to begging women and children – they will approach you on the street or knock on the windows of cars you’re riding in. Distributing even a coin or two makes many more children materialize instantly. On the other hand, I often carried apples or candy bars with me and passed them out when asked (but once or twice, this led to fights between the recipient and other kids).
6. Don’t assume everyone eats meat and drinks alcohol. Many Indians are “veg” (eat only vegetarian foods) and others don’t drink. I never saw a restaurant with beef on the menu as Hindus revere the cow. Be careful what you order when eating with Indian people and be prepared to give up beefsteak and the burgers. Follow your host’s lead in this department.
7. Don’t make flashy displays of wealth or property – this is a poor country and foreigners stand out enough without flaunting themselves and their property.
8. Don’t insist on “self-help.” We Americans carry our own bags, make our own beds, drive our own cars, and are generally quite self-sufficient, but in India, you’ll be waited on, so relax and enjoy it. In the high-end hotels, waiters, concierges, travel desk attendants, butlers, housekeepers, and other service-providers are eager to do things for you – and that’s how they make a living. With more than a billion people, India needs ways to keep its people working. Business travelers contribute to much-needed employment.
9. Don’t dive in to business conversation immediately upon meeting your contacts. They’ll want to know something about you first, and you should ask about them. Many conversations with Indian professionals began with two simple words – “tell me” – which was an invitation for me to tell them something about myself and my intentions. Eventually you’ll get to the business part of your conversation, but take a little time upfront to get acquainted. It will make for a smoother business relationship if you do.
10. Don’t go off on your own or wander into unknown parts of the city by yourself; let someone know where you are all the time, and always carry a photocopy of your passport (not the original) on your person. There is a high price paid in the black market for foreigners’ passports and it would be easy for a novice traveler in India to be taken advantage of or end up in a dangerous situation because he/she misreads what appears to be a friendly overture.
My Top 10 “Do” list:
1. Do take taxis or private cars (either from the hotel or those booked with reputable taxi companies) rather than walk in the cities, unless you know the area. On foot, you will likely be followed by auto-rickshaws, taxis and other vehicles, whose drivers honk incessantly to persuade you to accept a ride.
2. Do drink only bottled water that is provided by hotels and restaurants, and make sure the cap is sealed when the bottle is presented to you. Use this water for everything, including tooth-brushing. If you get a Coke or a soda, make sure it is served in a closed can and don’t take ice in it (or in any drink).
3. Do accept the exceptional Indian hospitality you will find everywhere. Your Indian hosts want your visit to be pleasant and successful and go out of their way to make sure it is. Put your skepticism aside – Indian hospitality is the real thing (and it’s wonderful).
4. Do bring along heaps of business and professional cards – everyone will ask for one and will offer you one. Even when you are meeting 10 people from the same company in the same room, you’ll be expected to give each person a card.
5. Do try and remember the names of the people you meet and address them by name – most of the Indian businesspeople I met used my first name (and expected me to use theirs) right away.
6. Do study up the companies you visit before you get there – they’re likely to make a big effort to prepare for your visit and it’s only reasonable for you to learn about them in advance.
7. Do take a day or two out of your schedule to see tourist sites or simply enjoy the city or town you’re in. Simply looking out a car window in India is more interesting than any movie you’ve ever seen if you haven’t been here before. Hire a guide if you’re especially interested in art or history – they’re knowledgeable and inexpensive and love to demonstrate their knowledge.
8. Do talk to strangers. I met interesting and friendly people in airports, on trains, in hotels, and even on the street. I never felt threatened or intimidated and everyone I met with a smile and a hello seemed eager to engage in conversation.
9. Do dress modestly if you are female and professionally (not in shorts, even when it’s hot) if you’re male. Indian ladies have a wonderful and colorful look with their loose bright sarees, but these garments are designed to cover a lot of the body. Form-fitting clothes on women just aren’t seen (except perhaps in Western-style nightclubs). In the cities, men don’t wear shorts, t-shirts, baseball caps, or sandals. Although the dress code is casual, it’s also modest and businesslike.
10. Do keep an open mind – you may be frustrated by the apparent contradictions you face everyday, but this is an ancient country with a complex history and there’s simply no way to figure out “what’s what” on a short business trip. So et go of any preconceived ideas about what a business trip should be, and accept that India is very different from Indiana.
And my Top 10 “Don’ts” are:
1. Don’t neglect to prepare for your India trip with more attention that you might give if traveling elsewhere. For example, Americans need a visa (and a documented business purpose to obtain a business visa valid for 6 months), and you’ll probably also need shots for hepatitis, typhoid fever, and perhaps tetanus, and pills for malaria, diarrhea and other potential illnesses. Bring along special foods you can’t live without (none of my 5-star hotels had a convenience store) and special toiletry items, plus loads of hand sanitizer. Don’t forget your camera and computer and all the cords, cables, converters, chargers and adapters you’ll need for plugging it in. Figure out how to get all your hand-carried items into a single (1) carry-on.
2. Don’t be late for meetings – although I was told that Indians are routinely about 30 minutes late for everything, I found all my Indian hosts to be not only punctual but often quite early.
3. Don’t over-schedule yourself. It takes 30-90 minutes to reach some offices from downtown city hotels because traffic is heavy and unpredictable. I would aim for one meeting a day rather than two if it’s possible, unless the second meeting is a dinner meeting or something late in the evening. By US standards, Indians eat dinner on the late side (8-9pm or later).
4. Don’t engage in public displays of affection (PDA) with members of the opposite sex. You often see men and boys holding hands or with their arms draped around each others’ shoulders, and you sometimes see women walking arm-in-arm, but rarely do men and women touch in public and I never saw any overt displays of affection between men and women, which I assume means PDA isn’t appropriate.
5. Don’t give money to begging women and children – they will approach you on the street or knock on the windows of cars you’re riding in. Distributing even a coin or two makes many more children materialize instantly. On the other hand, I often carried apples or candy bars with me and passed them out when asked (but once or twice, this led to fights between the recipient and other kids).
6. Don’t assume everyone eats meat and drinks alcohol. Many Indians are “veg” (eat only vegetarian foods) and others don’t drink. I never saw a restaurant with beef on the menu as Hindus revere the cow. Be careful what you order when eating with Indian people and be prepared to give up beefsteak and the burgers. Follow your host’s lead in this department.
7. Don’t make flashy displays of wealth or property – this is a poor country and foreigners stand out enough without flaunting themselves and their property.
8. Don’t insist on “self-help.” We Americans carry our own bags, make our own beds, drive our own cars, and are generally quite self-sufficient, but in India, you’ll be waited on, so relax and enjoy it. In the high-end hotels, waiters, concierges, travel desk attendants, butlers, housekeepers, and other service-providers are eager to do things for you – and that’s how they make a living. With more than a billion people, India needs ways to keep its people working. Business travelers contribute to much-needed employment.
9. Don’t dive in to business conversation immediately upon meeting your contacts. They’ll want to know something about you first, and you should ask about them. Many conversations with Indian professionals began with two simple words – “tell me” – which was an invitation for me to tell them something about myself and my intentions. Eventually you’ll get to the business part of your conversation, but take a little time upfront to get acquainted. It will make for a smoother business relationship if you do.
10. Don’t go off on your own or wander into unknown parts of the city by yourself; let someone know where you are all the time, and always carry a photocopy of your passport (not the original) on your person. There is a high price paid in the black market for foreigners’ passports and it would be easy for a novice traveler in India to be taken advantage of or end up in a dangerous situation because he/she misreads what appears to be a friendly overture.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Delhi Lifestyle & Departure (Feb. 25-26, 2007)
My last evening in Delhi was spent having dinner at the beautifully & luxurious home of an American executive for a multinational company. He and his family have been in India almost two years, and shared their wildly varied impressions. They’ve experienced the same warm Indian hospitality that makes India so special, but are bedeviled by power outages, massive traffic jams, and the general dirtiness of the city. Based on this man’s descriptions of restaurants he’s visited in connection with his work, I would hesitate to eat anything at all in India, whether in a 5-star hotel or elsewhere. Luckily, I was blissfully unaware of his perspective when I ate my way through Bangalore, Mumbai and Jaipur! (As mentioned earlier, it all caught up with me in Delhi.)
The middle and upper economic classes live well in Delhi – I was invited to two extremely luxurious homes, and spent a day with a mid-career (non-partner) lawyer about her lifestyle, including her reliance on household staff. With one child, this 35-year old married lawyer employs a household staff of three – including maid, cook and driver, and is presently thinking about adding a personal security guard to protect her young son. The home of the American executive mentioned above is protected by armed guards 24/7. Wages for a household employee such as a cook or nanny are as low as US $60 a month, and treatment of staff varies from one household to the next. For example, in a restaurant, my new lawyer-friend called my attention to a table where a young couple was sitting with their toddler and the toddler’s nanny. The couple and their child ordered and ate a meal, but the nanny was not given any food until the others had finished eating, at which point the mother took some uneaten cake from her own plate and handed it to the nanny.
My trip to India was everything I hoped it would be and more – exotic, eye-opening, and educational from both business and personal perspectives. The only black mark was the scene at the Delhi airport and the long trip back to Paris (via London) where I rested for a couple days before flying home. The throngs of people outside the Delhi airport were absolutely astonishing, probably because only ticketed passengers are allowed inside the terminal. This restriction doesn’t prevent family and friends from showing up at the airport -- it just means that all the non-travelers pack the sidewalks and walkways leading to the terminal entrance doors. Baggage trolleys, if used offensively, are mildly effective to clear a path. It took about 20 minutes to navigate the 20 yards from the taxi door to the terminal door. It’s a stressful 20 minutes, because you have to constantly protect yourself and your luggage trolley from being commandeered by the endless number of “porters” who are trying to make a few rupees by helping you navigate the sea of humanity.
Inside the terminal, the real mayhem begins. You line up for baggage scanning, although the term “line” doesn’t accurately describe the assembly of people, which is completely disorganized. I latched onto a Punjabi family returning home to the UK, and with multiple baggage trolleys as body armor, we pushed our way (about 10 yards) to the entrance to the baggage screeners in about 20 minutes. Baggage screening applies only to checked baggage – for hand carried baggage, you enter yet another screening area where men and women are segregated and their bags and bodies searched. Another 15 minutes of chaos. You can’t board the plane without the right “stamp” on your hand baggage, though.
The next step is to queue up at the ticket counter for a boarding pass. This is an exercise in insanity. After 30 minutes of total non-movement, an exasperated passenger raised a fuss that led to the removal from the line of four elderly women who were busy asking questions of the agent rather than obtaining boarding passes. Eventually I got a boarding pass and faced the last obstacle to departure, the immigration control area. On the way out of Delhi, this took only a few minutes, but my new Punjabi friends reported that it took 3 hours on the way in! Once in the boarding area, you’re adrift in a sea of people, with no shops or other amenities and toilet facilities that are unusable. My advice to anyone considering a business trip to India is to avoid the Delhi airport – even if you have to fly in and out of another city and commute to Delhi by car. (A first-class ticket – which I didn’t have -- helps avoid some of the lines in London and Heathrow, but doesn’t appear to make much difference in Delhi.) The Delhi airport authority should be ashamed to have this be the visitor's first, or last, impression of India. I recommend they go to Mumbai and see how an airport should be run.
London Heathrow is no picnic either. The new one-bag limit for this airport was very stressful for people carrying a laptop and handbag, as it had to be “one or the other” with no exceptions allowed. People with more than one bag were sent from the front of the screening line all the way back to the check-in counters to check the excess, and then they had to return to the screening lines. Luckily, I traveled with a backpack that held both laptop and my personal effects. Having gone through security hell in Delhi, I assumed I could just pass from one British Airways flight to another, but I was wrong. You have to begin the security checks all over again in London, and for the connection to Paris, I joined the back of a line of about 1,000 in-transit passengers. With no one to answer questions and a number of passengers anxious about their connections, the stress level was very high. The principal difference between the London and the Delhi airports was that the folks in Heathrow know how to form a line (and they do) and the bathrooms are functional. Eighteen hours after arriving at the airport in Delhi, I gratefully landed in Paris Charles de Gaulle.
The middle and upper economic classes live well in Delhi – I was invited to two extremely luxurious homes, and spent a day with a mid-career (non-partner) lawyer about her lifestyle, including her reliance on household staff. With one child, this 35-year old married lawyer employs a household staff of three – including maid, cook and driver, and is presently thinking about adding a personal security guard to protect her young son. The home of the American executive mentioned above is protected by armed guards 24/7. Wages for a household employee such as a cook or nanny are as low as US $60 a month, and treatment of staff varies from one household to the next. For example, in a restaurant, my new lawyer-friend called my attention to a table where a young couple was sitting with their toddler and the toddler’s nanny. The couple and their child ordered and ate a meal, but the nanny was not given any food until the others had finished eating, at which point the mother took some uneaten cake from her own plate and handed it to the nanny.
My trip to India was everything I hoped it would be and more – exotic, eye-opening, and educational from both business and personal perspectives. The only black mark was the scene at the Delhi airport and the long trip back to Paris (via London) where I rested for a couple days before flying home. The throngs of people outside the Delhi airport were absolutely astonishing, probably because only ticketed passengers are allowed inside the terminal. This restriction doesn’t prevent family and friends from showing up at the airport -- it just means that all the non-travelers pack the sidewalks and walkways leading to the terminal entrance doors. Baggage trolleys, if used offensively, are mildly effective to clear a path. It took about 20 minutes to navigate the 20 yards from the taxi door to the terminal door. It’s a stressful 20 minutes, because you have to constantly protect yourself and your luggage trolley from being commandeered by the endless number of “porters” who are trying to make a few rupees by helping you navigate the sea of humanity.
Inside the terminal, the real mayhem begins. You line up for baggage scanning, although the term “line” doesn’t accurately describe the assembly of people, which is completely disorganized. I latched onto a Punjabi family returning home to the UK, and with multiple baggage trolleys as body armor, we pushed our way (about 10 yards) to the entrance to the baggage screeners in about 20 minutes. Baggage screening applies only to checked baggage – for hand carried baggage, you enter yet another screening area where men and women are segregated and their bags and bodies searched. Another 15 minutes of chaos. You can’t board the plane without the right “stamp” on your hand baggage, though.
The next step is to queue up at the ticket counter for a boarding pass. This is an exercise in insanity. After 30 minutes of total non-movement, an exasperated passenger raised a fuss that led to the removal from the line of four elderly women who were busy asking questions of the agent rather than obtaining boarding passes. Eventually I got a boarding pass and faced the last obstacle to departure, the immigration control area. On the way out of Delhi, this took only a few minutes, but my new Punjabi friends reported that it took 3 hours on the way in! Once in the boarding area, you’re adrift in a sea of people, with no shops or other amenities and toilet facilities that are unusable. My advice to anyone considering a business trip to India is to avoid the Delhi airport – even if you have to fly in and out of another city and commute to Delhi by car. (A first-class ticket – which I didn’t have -- helps avoid some of the lines in London and Heathrow, but doesn’t appear to make much difference in Delhi.) The Delhi airport authority should be ashamed to have this be the visitor's first, or last, impression of India. I recommend they go to Mumbai and see how an airport should be run.
London Heathrow is no picnic either. The new one-bag limit for this airport was very stressful for people carrying a laptop and handbag, as it had to be “one or the other” with no exceptions allowed. People with more than one bag were sent from the front of the screening line all the way back to the check-in counters to check the excess, and then they had to return to the screening lines. Luckily, I traveled with a backpack that held both laptop and my personal effects. Having gone through security hell in Delhi, I assumed I could just pass from one British Airways flight to another, but I was wrong. You have to begin the security checks all over again in London, and for the connection to Paris, I joined the back of a line of about 1,000 in-transit passengers. With no one to answer questions and a number of passengers anxious about their connections, the stress level was very high. The principal difference between the London and the Delhi airports was that the folks in Heathrow know how to form a line (and they do) and the bathrooms are functional. Eighteen hours after arriving at the airport in Delhi, I gratefully landed in Paris Charles de Gaulle.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Capital Traffic Woes and Delhi Shopping
In previous postings, I described the vehicles (and other things) on Indian roads, and Delhi surpasses my earlier destinations in terms of the variety on the roadways. On a highway from Gurgaon (a suburb of Delhi) to Delhi, a bicyclist traveled by holding onto the shoulder of a motorcyclist and was being towed in this manner at about 40 mph in the middle traffic lane. Even considering the camels, elephants and heavily-laden rickshaws on the roads, this topped my list for hazardous and shocking transportation methods. Incredibly, the bike/motorcycle duo was traveling at night, when lights were low…
The new part of the city (New Delhi) is a leafy area of luxury hotels, wide avenues, embassies, diplomats’ homes, parks, and government buildings. I ate lunch in the Bukhara Restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel, called the “best Indian restaurant in the world” by the British Airways in-flight magazine. (Apparently, Bill Clinton raved about it on a recent trip to India.) Apparently not everyone had read the review, because my guests, two Burmese residents of Delhi, and a young Indian from Tamil Nadu, pronounced the food “like any other Indian food.” At $150 for lunch for four (without drinks except one Coke and bottled water), it was by far my most expensive meal in India, but for nearly two weeks I have been treated by Indian businesspeople and lawyers for my meals, so I can’t complain. Inexplicably, the BA in-flight magazine article captioned “48 Hours in Delhi” recommended (in addition to Bukhara) that visitors sample the food cooked on the street – something every single Indian and non-Indian alike insisted one should not do! I guess this particular bit of advice did not pass by the BA magazine’s lawyers…
Old Delhi is an exotic visual treat – there is a red fort from the Mughal era, plus an enormous mosque open to the public and endless street markets chock-a-block with secondhand booksellers and clothes sellers. I love to shop, but I’m no match for Indian vendors (who range from children selling trinkets at tourist sites to stall-sellers and retail shopkeepers) in either persistence or patience. Eventually I gave in to the lure of the exotic handcrafts, and bought purses, silver jewelry, and necklaces of natural stones like agate and quartz, all reasonably priced, even at the “starting” prices quoted. If I asked for the prices of three items, the first price was always lower than the second, the second lower than the third. It occurred to me later that the escalating price quote method was a way of making sure you bought at least the first item, because it was the cheapest. Bargaining can go on all day and begins in earnest once you accept a cup of tea or a soda. My negotiating method was to deduct 20-30 % of the starting price and tell the seller firmly that my first price was also my last. It wasn’t usually my last, but most often, it was my second-to-last. This technique probably didn’t get me the best prices, but it did limit the time I spent negotiating. For serious shoppers, the “real” jewelry is astonishing – think huge south sea pearls, multicolored gems such as rubies, emeralds and sapphires, uncut diamonds and 22K gold! Handcrafted into traditional designs, it’s very glamorous indeed. I looked and I even tried on, but didn’t seriously consider buying the pieces that appeared designed for a maharani or an empress.
Incidentally, once you buy something, the real sales pitch starts. The vendors apparently work on the theory that it’s easier to make multiples sales to an existing customer than to convert a mere browser into a customer. American financial services providers could take a useful page from this particular playbook.
The new part of the city (New Delhi) is a leafy area of luxury hotels, wide avenues, embassies, diplomats’ homes, parks, and government buildings. I ate lunch in the Bukhara Restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel, called the “best Indian restaurant in the world” by the British Airways in-flight magazine. (Apparently, Bill Clinton raved about it on a recent trip to India.) Apparently not everyone had read the review, because my guests, two Burmese residents of Delhi, and a young Indian from Tamil Nadu, pronounced the food “like any other Indian food.” At $150 for lunch for four (without drinks except one Coke and bottled water), it was by far my most expensive meal in India, but for nearly two weeks I have been treated by Indian businesspeople and lawyers for my meals, so I can’t complain. Inexplicably, the BA in-flight magazine article captioned “48 Hours in Delhi” recommended (in addition to Bukhara) that visitors sample the food cooked on the street – something every single Indian and non-Indian alike insisted one should not do! I guess this particular bit of advice did not pass by the BA magazine’s lawyers…
Old Delhi is an exotic visual treat – there is a red fort from the Mughal era, plus an enormous mosque open to the public and endless street markets chock-a-block with secondhand booksellers and clothes sellers. I love to shop, but I’m no match for Indian vendors (who range from children selling trinkets at tourist sites to stall-sellers and retail shopkeepers) in either persistence or patience. Eventually I gave in to the lure of the exotic handcrafts, and bought purses, silver jewelry, and necklaces of natural stones like agate and quartz, all reasonably priced, even at the “starting” prices quoted. If I asked for the prices of three items, the first price was always lower than the second, the second lower than the third. It occurred to me later that the escalating price quote method was a way of making sure you bought at least the first item, because it was the cheapest. Bargaining can go on all day and begins in earnest once you accept a cup of tea or a soda. My negotiating method was to deduct 20-30 % of the starting price and tell the seller firmly that my first price was also my last. It wasn’t usually my last, but most often, it was my second-to-last. This technique probably didn’t get me the best prices, but it did limit the time I spent negotiating. For serious shoppers, the “real” jewelry is astonishing – think huge south sea pearls, multicolored gems such as rubies, emeralds and sapphires, uncut diamonds and 22K gold! Handcrafted into traditional designs, it’s very glamorous indeed. I looked and I even tried on, but didn’t seriously consider buying the pieces that appeared designed for a maharani or an empress.
Incidentally, once you buy something, the real sales pitch starts. The vendors apparently work on the theory that it’s easier to make multiples sales to an existing customer than to convert a mere browser into a customer. American financial services providers could take a useful page from this particular playbook.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Delhi Belly
I succumbed to “Delhi belly” within 24 hours of arrival in this city. Fortunately, I’d brought a prescription for this anticipated condition from home, although it didn’t take effect as fast as I’d hoped. No more need be said on the subject, but visitors to India should prepare in advance for the possibility of gastric distress.
Fellow lawyers welcomed me warmly to Delhi, with one prominent name partner of an Indian multi-office firm hosting me at dinner in his (palatial) home and another offering a lovely lunch with good conversation at a fine restaurant. The clientele of these successful lawyers is principally American and multinational corporations, rather than Indian businesses. Unlike American law firms, Indian firms also operate affiliated businesses in areas ranging from legal process outsourcing (LPO) to consulting/risk management, and security, audits and investigations. As long as the two entities are legally distinct, Indian law allows this multi-line approach to professional services.
American lawyers should note the responsiveness of our Indian counterparts. Client calls are returned almost instantly, if not answered on the spot, and every lawyer I met carried both a mobile phone and blackberry. Indian lawyers in Delhi firms work Saturdays or alternate Saturdays, and text messages are acknowledged on receipt. The Indian press reports that there are 600 million cell phones in use in India, and it seems that about 500 million of them are in use at one time!
Prompt responsiveness is not confined to lawyers, either. In the 5-star hotels, requests are dispatched immediately. For example, reading a newspaper in the breakfast room in Delhi’s Taj Mahal Hotel, I asked a waiter the meaning of the word “recce” in a business news headline. He confessed not knowing, but five minutes later returned with an opened dictionary, where I learned it means “reconnaissance” (as in a reconnaissance mission). The headline concerned an executive from WalMart on recce with an executive from the Indian company Bharti, as the two companies plan a retail joint venture in India. I loved reading Indian newspapers and picked up new words daily – my favorite was “millihelens,” which represents a unit of beauty for a female. (A woman with a high millihelen level has a face pretty enough to launch ships, like Helen of Troy.) I’ve never experienced faster response times from room service or housekeeping in any other country – a request for additional clothes hangars was answered in less than a minute, and in each hotel, the in-house technology staff provided internet connectivity assistance in 5 minutes or less.
A Delhi BPO firm was less impressive than its Mumbai and Bangalore counterparts. The company office was a microcosm of the crowded city streets, with job applicants jamming the reception area, workers wandering around the hallways, overcrowded elevators, and a chaotic scene in the break/snack room. Senior managers referred to the company’s employees in unflattering terms, suggesting they are unmotivated and disloyal, meaning they will job-hop for a few thousand rupees in monthly salary. A Q&A session with the supervisors of the operations staff impressed me, however –they were well-versed on various aspects of US financial services programs, and we had a lively and wide-ranging discussion of the effects of interest deductibility on Americans’ willingness to assume mortgages, and about the characteristics of different types of mortgage securities. The BPO firm collects delinquent mortgage payments and the supervisors asked about the legal distinction between personal service of foreclosure notices and service by publication. I fielded questions about penalties for failure to give mortgage disclosure notices timely, and if the 3-hour visit hadn’t ended, I would have been asked for a briefing on privacy requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Without doubt, the BPO firms are eager to pick up as much information as they can, as quickly as they can.
Fellow lawyers welcomed me warmly to Delhi, with one prominent name partner of an Indian multi-office firm hosting me at dinner in his (palatial) home and another offering a lovely lunch with good conversation at a fine restaurant. The clientele of these successful lawyers is principally American and multinational corporations, rather than Indian businesses. Unlike American law firms, Indian firms also operate affiliated businesses in areas ranging from legal process outsourcing (LPO) to consulting/risk management, and security, audits and investigations. As long as the two entities are legally distinct, Indian law allows this multi-line approach to professional services.
American lawyers should note the responsiveness of our Indian counterparts. Client calls are returned almost instantly, if not answered on the spot, and every lawyer I met carried both a mobile phone and blackberry. Indian lawyers in Delhi firms work Saturdays or alternate Saturdays, and text messages are acknowledged on receipt. The Indian press reports that there are 600 million cell phones in use in India, and it seems that about 500 million of them are in use at one time!
Prompt responsiveness is not confined to lawyers, either. In the 5-star hotels, requests are dispatched immediately. For example, reading a newspaper in the breakfast room in Delhi’s Taj Mahal Hotel, I asked a waiter the meaning of the word “recce” in a business news headline. He confessed not knowing, but five minutes later returned with an opened dictionary, where I learned it means “reconnaissance” (as in a reconnaissance mission). The headline concerned an executive from WalMart on recce with an executive from the Indian company Bharti, as the two companies plan a retail joint venture in India. I loved reading Indian newspapers and picked up new words daily – my favorite was “millihelens,” which represents a unit of beauty for a female. (A woman with a high millihelen level has a face pretty enough to launch ships, like Helen of Troy.) I’ve never experienced faster response times from room service or housekeeping in any other country – a request for additional clothes hangars was answered in less than a minute, and in each hotel, the in-house technology staff provided internet connectivity assistance in 5 minutes or less.
A Delhi BPO firm was less impressive than its Mumbai and Bangalore counterparts. The company office was a microcosm of the crowded city streets, with job applicants jamming the reception area, workers wandering around the hallways, overcrowded elevators, and a chaotic scene in the break/snack room. Senior managers referred to the company’s employees in unflattering terms, suggesting they are unmotivated and disloyal, meaning they will job-hop for a few thousand rupees in monthly salary. A Q&A session with the supervisors of the operations staff impressed me, however –they were well-versed on various aspects of US financial services programs, and we had a lively and wide-ranging discussion of the effects of interest deductibility on Americans’ willingness to assume mortgages, and about the characteristics of different types of mortgage securities. The BPO firm collects delinquent mortgage payments and the supervisors asked about the legal distinction between personal service of foreclosure notices and service by publication. I fielded questions about penalties for failure to give mortgage disclosure notices timely, and if the 3-hour visit hadn’t ended, I would have been asked for a briefing on privacy requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Without doubt, the BPO firms are eager to pick up as much information as they can, as quickly as they can.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
BPO, LPO, KPO and Bollywood
In Mumbai, I visited processing centers affiliated with the US investment banking industry. These firms are insistent that they are not in the BPO industry but are engaged in "knowledge processing," which has been captioned "KPO." The concern is that the high level work being done in subjects such as financial analysis may be mistakenly confused with call center work. I learned that investment and financial analysis, modeling, and similar financial tasks are ripe for outsourcing and that the India-based firms doing this type of work are hiring mostly MBAs and even PhDs. Some Indian-born professionals are "coming home" to India to pursue opportunities here that may be greater than those abroad, with recruits from the US and Canada asking to extend their temporary tours in India. The newspapers report that the top graduates of the top business school in India were offered 2.38 jobs each in 2006, with salaries as high as US $85,000, but anecdotally the word is that top salaries being offered by the financial services industry range up to $250,000. This may account for increasing talk of outsourcing to countries like China, as India's cost advantage slims down. I was given evidence indicating that the BPO industry today accounts for as much as 5-7% of India's GDP. On the other hand, these KPO jobs are extremely difficult to get -- for the second time, I was given an estimate that the number of university graduates who are "employable" by the BPO/KPO firms is in the single digits (i.e., less than 10% of the total number of graduates). Yesterday's paper reported a country-wide household income level of less than $1,500 US, which makes it obvious how rare and desirable the BPO, LPO and KPO jobs must be. (However, with so much of India's population earning livelihoods in rural areas, a country-wide average income figure is not very descriptive.)
In the investment banking-related firms, the security measures described in previous posts were supplemented by a personal escort to the ladies room, with my host standing by constantly so I would not be out of sight. At the entrance to one company's parking area, I counted 12 security guards at a single check-in station.
In the investment banking-related firms, the security measures described in previous posts were supplemented by a personal escort to the ladies room, with my host standing by constantly so I would not be out of sight. At the entrance to one company's parking area, I counted 12 security guards at a single check-in station.
On a more amusing note, I took a detour to Jaipur yesterday on my way to a final round of meetings in Delhi. Jaipur is an ancient city that was ruled by the Mughals and by a king known as the Maharaja of Jaipur until India's independence. Independence aside, my guide and people in the hotel here continue to refer to the deceased maharaja as the king, and his grandson (now 10 years old) apparently will be known as king eventually as well. The maharaja's palace in town (the City Palace) was the setting for a wedding party yesterday, so the royalty of India have joined other international royalty in earning gate fees for museum entrance and premises rental. Gate fees at the palaces include a separate charge for cameras (and the charge for a video camera is higher than the charge for a still camera -- these folks know how to protect their IP! At the end of the day, eating dinner in a posh restaurant in the Taj Rambahl Palace Hotel, a waiter pointed out an elderly woman with an escort of 5 people, as the widow of the last maharaja.
In the Amber Palace on a hill atop Jaipur, the history lesson provided by my guide was somewhat lost on me because a Bollywood movie was being filmed and the singers and dancers were so colorful and lively that my attention was diverted from the old palace and tales of long-dead kings and queens. I've always loved these movies, with their sometimes corny story lines, bright costumes, and highly choreographed dance routines. I caught some photos of the dancing group which will be added to this post, and later met the producer (I didn't have a pen handy but
I believe his name is Khan) and a bystander to the photo informed me later that the producer is also a well-known Bollywood actor. He might have been disappointed I didn't recognize him, but a reader of this blog might -- if so, please identify him in a comment...In earlier posts, I've reported on the array of vehicles on the roadway in Indian cities. To this, after visiting Jaipur, I add elephants and camels, as well as hand-drawn rickshaws. The mind boggles at seeing an elephant with a brightly painted face lumbering along in the middle lane of 3 lanes of heavy traffic. Neither the animal nor the motorists seem bothered by the mix.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
February 18 - On to Mumbai (still called Bombay here)
A visit to the Indian affiliate of a US-based title insurance company in Bangalore opened my eyes to several realities of the Indian real property market. First, there is no title insurance protection for buyers of land or homes, meaning there is no title insurance industry and property owners do not obtain attorneys’ opinions that they have marketable title. A person buys a home or land with no assurance that his title is not subject to adverse claims. If there is a dispute, the courts are available, but cases involving claims to land can take up to 20 years to work their way through the courts.
A US-India based company is working to change this, but it will be difficult because many title documents are not registered with the government (the transferors and transferees avoid the registration fees) and government documents are not as easily accessible as in the US. There is an Indian right to information act, but one cannot obtain multiple documents at once through this law; rather, one must specify the parcel of land for which ownership and deed documents are desired. This might be a long-term impediment to development of a comprehensive title plant for Indian land, but it doesn’t appear to have suppressed a booming real estate market. Both the newspapers and locals report increases in land values of 30% or more in a single year recently. Even middle class people such as attorneys are renting, rather than buying, because of land prices. Moreover, there is apparently no uniform system for rating a prospective homebuyer’s credit, such as the FICO score in the US. Each bank and prospective lender performs its own examination of a potential borrower’s ability to repay.
Presently, however, at least one major company is offering title insurance on Indian property, but only for properties owned by foreigners, and then only for commercial property (not residential). While the local market is ripening, title searches and initial preparation of title insurance commitments for US property are prepared on an outsource basis by India-based companies that research title based on digitized copies of land records, assessment records and so forth. These are then sent electronically to the US. It dazzles the mind to think of a title researcher in Bangalore reviewing the exceptions to title of a property in Boston, but it is happening. India based companies know that as costs are reduced, their parent companies might be under increasing pressure to reduce rates for insurance policies, so they are thinking creatively about how to make the industry more efficient.
A quick flight from Bangalore to Bombay (Mumbai is the new name) demonstrated the difference between India and US air travel. For a domestic flight, documents and hand luggage were examined three times between the counter and the plane, yet on a 1.5 hour flight, a hot meal was served. Both front and rear exit doors were used to deplane, so the whole process was more efficient than in the US. Jet Airways uses e-tickets and handles luggage efficiently. It is a great relief in Indian airports to be met by a driver from the hotel because the airport terminals are super-crowded and there seem to be 3 porters for each passenger. It’s a scrum among the porters when the baggage arrives, so you have to think fast or your two pieces will be on separate carts under the care of separate porters.
One hour in light traffic to the hotel, and even in half-light, Bombay is a study in contrasts. There are modern high-rises and the sea on one side of the car, and small children begging by knocking on the car windows on the other. People who have visited India before told me not to respond to begging children (for various reasons) but it’s heartbreaking and hard to look away. To reach the car windows, these kids (and some are really small) have to dart in and around some of the most aggressive traffic I’ve ever seen – the traffic here makes Rome and Bangkok streets seem tame. The music of urban India is the din of car horns. Added to the buses, cars, trucks, pedicabs, moto-rickshaws, motorcycles, scooters and bicycles I’ve seen in Bangalore, in Bombay there are also horse-drawn carriages and cattle drawn carts.
Today (Sunday) was a day of leisure, so I hired a car and visited Ghandi’s residence in Bombay (now a museum), drove along Marine Drive and saw the Mosque, shopped for sarees and salwar kameez garments, ate lunch at the Delhi Dhaba, and saw both the dhobi (community laundry) and the red-light district. I talked to Guajarati and Punjabi people and now believe that English is not as widely spoken as I previously believed – almost everyone knows a few words, but except for the educated people, most people I asked said that only half the people speak English. I hope to be able to add photos to my blog soon, because the football field-sized areas where institutional laundry is being washed and dried in public is an amazing sight.
Yesterday, I took at 3.5 hour train trip to Pune, which is known as a university city with quite a few law schools (17, up from three a few years ago). I visited a new legal process outsourcing company and gave a short talk to about 35 staff lawyers who were curious to know how lawyers practice in the USA and how they might help their American counterparts work more efficiently. These lawyers don’t have the luxury of private offices – they work in close proximity to one another, seated in rows, all in one room. The working conditions didn’t discourage them from asking questions ranging from “what is diversity jurisdiction?” to “can evidence be filed electronically in US courts?” It was a wonderful chance to see Indian lawyers in action in an LPO. In 25 years of law practice, I haven’t seen lawyers this eager to work and succeed – the LPO industry (estimated by one businessman at 55 companies) is sure to present a major challenge for the legal profession in higher-priced countries.
The LPO I visited in Pune had meaningful security systems in place to prevent breach of client-related confidential information, such as personal lockers for employees’ possessions (none may be taken into the workspace), client-only computers in the work stations (no servers or disc drives attached), key cards to enter the work area, and personal background checks for all lawyers. Other BPO shops have engine compartment and trunk searches for each vehicle entering their compounds, hand wanding of visitors and employees with metal detection devices (on the way in AND on the way out), surprise sweeps of computers to see what pages have been downloaded by employees, and reward programs for reporting suspected security falws. The VA lawyer who left his laptop containing veterans’ personal information in his car wouldn’t have made it in an Indian LPO.
Still, the trip to Pune and back (7+ hours by train, even on the “easy seats”) was no picnic and the business community is probably eager for the opening of the airport that promises to serve international traffic. The crowd in the Bombay CST train station brings to mind a public emergency shelter, with people sitting and sleeping on the floor, as every available seat is taken and there is simply not enough room for the thousands of people thronging the station. Still, train travel is a way to strike up conversations and I talked to teenagers (reading “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul”), a textile manufacturer, and a software engineer – all were open and apparently happy to answer a foreigner’s questions about their lives and their country.
A US-India based company is working to change this, but it will be difficult because many title documents are not registered with the government (the transferors and transferees avoid the registration fees) and government documents are not as easily accessible as in the US. There is an Indian right to information act, but one cannot obtain multiple documents at once through this law; rather, one must specify the parcel of land for which ownership and deed documents are desired. This might be a long-term impediment to development of a comprehensive title plant for Indian land, but it doesn’t appear to have suppressed a booming real estate market. Both the newspapers and locals report increases in land values of 30% or more in a single year recently. Even middle class people such as attorneys are renting, rather than buying, because of land prices. Moreover, there is apparently no uniform system for rating a prospective homebuyer’s credit, such as the FICO score in the US. Each bank and prospective lender performs its own examination of a potential borrower’s ability to repay.
Presently, however, at least one major company is offering title insurance on Indian property, but only for properties owned by foreigners, and then only for commercial property (not residential). While the local market is ripening, title searches and initial preparation of title insurance commitments for US property are prepared on an outsource basis by India-based companies that research title based on digitized copies of land records, assessment records and so forth. These are then sent electronically to the US. It dazzles the mind to think of a title researcher in Bangalore reviewing the exceptions to title of a property in Boston, but it is happening. India based companies know that as costs are reduced, their parent companies might be under increasing pressure to reduce rates for insurance policies, so they are thinking creatively about how to make the industry more efficient.
A quick flight from Bangalore to Bombay (Mumbai is the new name) demonstrated the difference between India and US air travel. For a domestic flight, documents and hand luggage were examined three times between the counter and the plane, yet on a 1.5 hour flight, a hot meal was served. Both front and rear exit doors were used to deplane, so the whole process was more efficient than in the US. Jet Airways uses e-tickets and handles luggage efficiently. It is a great relief in Indian airports to be met by a driver from the hotel because the airport terminals are super-crowded and there seem to be 3 porters for each passenger. It’s a scrum among the porters when the baggage arrives, so you have to think fast or your two pieces will be on separate carts under the care of separate porters.
One hour in light traffic to the hotel, and even in half-light, Bombay is a study in contrasts. There are modern high-rises and the sea on one side of the car, and small children begging by knocking on the car windows on the other. People who have visited India before told me not to respond to begging children (for various reasons) but it’s heartbreaking and hard to look away. To reach the car windows, these kids (and some are really small) have to dart in and around some of the most aggressive traffic I’ve ever seen – the traffic here makes Rome and Bangkok streets seem tame. The music of urban India is the din of car horns. Added to the buses, cars, trucks, pedicabs, moto-rickshaws, motorcycles, scooters and bicycles I’ve seen in Bangalore, in Bombay there are also horse-drawn carriages and cattle drawn carts.
Today (Sunday) was a day of leisure, so I hired a car and visited Ghandi’s residence in Bombay (now a museum), drove along Marine Drive and saw the Mosque, shopped for sarees and salwar kameez garments, ate lunch at the Delhi Dhaba, and saw both the dhobi (community laundry) and the red-light district. I talked to Guajarati and Punjabi people and now believe that English is not as widely spoken as I previously believed – almost everyone knows a few words, but except for the educated people, most people I asked said that only half the people speak English. I hope to be able to add photos to my blog soon, because the football field-sized areas where institutional laundry is being washed and dried in public is an amazing sight.
Yesterday, I took at 3.5 hour train trip to Pune, which is known as a university city with quite a few law schools (17, up from three a few years ago). I visited a new legal process outsourcing company and gave a short talk to about 35 staff lawyers who were curious to know how lawyers practice in the USA and how they might help their American counterparts work more efficiently. These lawyers don’t have the luxury of private offices – they work in close proximity to one another, seated in rows, all in one room. The working conditions didn’t discourage them from asking questions ranging from “what is diversity jurisdiction?” to “can evidence be filed electronically in US courts?” It was a wonderful chance to see Indian lawyers in action in an LPO. In 25 years of law practice, I haven’t seen lawyers this eager to work and succeed – the LPO industry (estimated by one businessman at 55 companies) is sure to present a major challenge for the legal profession in higher-priced countries.
The LPO I visited in Pune had meaningful security systems in place to prevent breach of client-related confidential information, such as personal lockers for employees’ possessions (none may be taken into the workspace), client-only computers in the work stations (no servers or disc drives attached), key cards to enter the work area, and personal background checks for all lawyers. Other BPO shops have engine compartment and trunk searches for each vehicle entering their compounds, hand wanding of visitors and employees with metal detection devices (on the way in AND on the way out), surprise sweeps of computers to see what pages have been downloaded by employees, and reward programs for reporting suspected security falws. The VA lawyer who left his laptop containing veterans’ personal information in his car wouldn’t have made it in an Indian LPO.
Still, the trip to Pune and back (7+ hours by train, even on the “easy seats”) was no picnic and the business community is probably eager for the opening of the airport that promises to serve international traffic. The crowd in the Bombay CST train station brings to mind a public emergency shelter, with people sitting and sleeping on the floor, as every available seat is taken and there is simply not enough room for the thousands of people thronging the station. Still, train travel is a way to strike up conversations and I talked to teenagers (reading “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul”), a textile manufacturer, and a software engineer – all were open and apparently happy to answer a foreigner’s questions about their lives and their country.
Random Facts from the News Headlines
Question of the day (answer at end):
What is the business of a store whose sign reads "Your Last Stop Shop?"
A few things on everyone's minds these days - India has qualified for the World Cricket Championship in the Caribbean in March - apparently the team wasn't expected to qualify and there may be a national holiday if they win. There are 600 million cell phone users in India! The government announced a plan to adopt and care for girl babies to prevent the continuing practice of foeticide, as there are only 821 girl babies for each 1,000 boy babies in Delhi and the practice is continuing. There aren't enough brides to go around. That means the families have to be creative - I met a woman in Bangalore who is bride-shopping on the internet for her two sons (and they live in Detroit and Rochester). The pop-ups on the websites here have a wild variety of match-making services.
Answer - it's a mortuary and embalming salon (this from a street sign in Mumbai).
What is the business of a store whose sign reads "Your Last Stop Shop?"
A few things on everyone's minds these days - India has qualified for the World Cricket Championship in the Caribbean in March - apparently the team wasn't expected to qualify and there may be a national holiday if they win. There are 600 million cell phone users in India! The government announced a plan to adopt and care for girl babies to prevent the continuing practice of foeticide, as there are only 821 girl babies for each 1,000 boy babies in Delhi and the practice is continuing. There aren't enough brides to go around. That means the families have to be creative - I met a woman in Bangalore who is bride-shopping on the internet for her two sons (and they live in Detroit and Rochester). The pop-ups on the websites here have a wild variety of match-making services.
Answer - it's a mortuary and embalming salon (this from a street sign in Mumbai).
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Information Technology Law Conference Report
The conference in Bangalore attracted about 300 people, of which nearly 60 were speakers from law firms, technology companies and legal outsourcing companies. It opened with a call by Dr. F.C. Kohli (referred to as the father of the Indian software industry) for technologists to create software in India’s 22 non-English languages so that the 600 million uneducated Indians in rural areas can access information to improve their livelihoods and their lives.
I thought the best presentation in the two days was the session on private equity investing in India, with detailed and substantive coverage of the tax implications and effects of various investment structures by attorney Bijal Ajinkya of Nishith Desai Associates (Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities), and guidance on the legal complexities associated with private investment in India by Stephen Mathias of the Bangalore office of the Kocchar & Co. law firm. (Rohit Kochhar, founder of the firm, is the author of “Doing Business in India,” published by Thomson/West.) Ms. Ajinkya described the tax advantages of utilizing India’s tax treaties with Mauritius, Cyprus and Singapore to structure capital investments, with special recommendations for structures applicable to Sharia investors (governed by Islamic law) and Japanese investors. Mr. Mathias outlined the specific limits on investments in listed and unlisted equities applicable to foreign direct investment (FDI) vehicles and foreign venture capital investment vehicles (FDVI). This session demonstrated a high level of technical knowledge by the law firms involved and made it clear that investing in India should not be considered by the uninitiated or the unrepresented.
Yesterday’s session on legal process outsourcing (LPO) sounded a warning to law firm lawyers everywhere: the LPO industry in India is booming. The panel featured two US-based private practitioners and executives of three India-based LPOs. The US lawyers recited a laundry list of potential obstacles to LPO (e.g., waiver of attorney-client privilege or work product privilege, quality of the Indian attorneys engaged, unauthorized practice of law concerns, ethical concerns about disclosure of the LPO relationship), but these arguments were dismissed by the LPO vendors who insist that their attorneys are not practicing law, either in India or in the US, when they undertake research assignments, litigation support tasks and patent searching for foreign law firms and corporations. (The Indian LPO vendors do not provide services to Indian corporations or firms.) Moreover, the lawyers employed by the LPO firms have US and UK legal training and are supervised by lawyers with experience in some of the best-known law firms in the world. Apparently, working for the LPO firms is quite desirable for Indian lawyers, and the LPOs claim they have no trouble recruiting from the best law schools in India and abroad.
Quislex, a 100-lawyer based LPO headquartered in Hyderabad and New York, is run by two Columbia Law School (NY) graduates, Sundari Pisupati and Ram Vasudevan. Both worked in major law firms before starting Quislex. Ms. Pisupati was valedictorian of her law class at The National Law School of India University, the country’s top law school, with five gold medals for outstanding achievement and medals from the President of India and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India. In India, they would call her a “topper.” Other emerging LPOs include Bodhi Global and New Galexy; the latter’s chief executive graduated from Cornell and his colleagues all trained in law firms in the US or the UK. In addition, “captive LPOs” are cropping up in India, as US companies set up India-based groups of in-house lawyers to supplement their in-house law departments. Dell has 7 lawyers in Bangalore, who act as “virtual contract managers” and “virtual legal counsel” for Dell’s sales team. The Dell LPO is only 18 months old, but will grow to assume additional responsibilities and perhaps even reduce Dell’s reliance on outside law firms, according to Sudha Munireddy, one of the lawyers in the Dell LPO group.
One factor driving the Indian LPO industry (besides comparative low rates of Indian lawyers vis-à-vis their American and European counterparts) is the prohibition on foreign law firms practicing here. (An obstacle to identifying qualified Indian firms is the prohibition on their having web pages.) Without this bar to foreign firms, which some Indian lawyers say will eventually be eased, major US and European law firms might simply acquire LPO offices and operate them as their India branches. (Might this be part of the strategic/growth/exit strategy for Indian LPO vendors….?) Uncertainty about the future of permitted legal structures for Indian and foreign lawyers may make it wise for a law firm or company doing significant business in India to get to know LPO companies while they are emerging, as the best of them might eventually be snapped up by competitors, either as branches of firms or captive corporate legal departments.
Post conference, I hosted a drinks party with Columbia University and Columbia Law School graduates attending the conference (there were 7 of us), ranging from a 2003 MBA to two 1982 law graduates. Columbia Law graduates in India have their LLMs, for the most part, and all are multilingual. In their company, I could not help feeling a little provincial. We found each other by word of mouth and review of the speaker biographies, and as a group, we’re working for India-based LPOs, law firms, major multinational corporations, and the Seoul National University. Our impromptu gathering was my introduction to Grover’s Reserve 2004, a good Indian red wine. It is a Cabernet Shiraz blend, made from French vines imported to India, and the grapes are grown in the Nambi hills outside Bangalore. As I’m so fond of saying, “who knew?”
Regrettably, the conference hotel, the Le Meridien, is inconvenient to the city center, so I could not get to the women’s professional tennis tournament that is happening this week, and missed the Valentine’s Day celebrations which filled the restaurants and nightclubs. Walking is challenging (some might say suicidal) but I navigated the streets for an hour yesterday until I would have had to cross a busy street, where I lost my nerve. Today’s papers reported 4 traffic fatalities in Bangalore yesterday, including two pedestrians mowed down by vehicles and two motorcyclists killed by a truck, so caution seems smart in retrospect. Bangalore lawyers travel by taxi or private car – chauffeured cars charge them 800 rupees (less than $20) for an 8-hour day (including waiting time), but the hotel’s travel desk charges more than 3,100 rupees for the 8-hour day, which is leaving quite a few conventioneers feeling ripped off. Consequently, I haven’t seen much of the so-called “garden city,” which was cited as the second-best city in India to do business according to a World Bank study released this week. (Hyderabad is in first place.)
I thought the best presentation in the two days was the session on private equity investing in India, with detailed and substantive coverage of the tax implications and effects of various investment structures by attorney Bijal Ajinkya of Nishith Desai Associates (Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities), and guidance on the legal complexities associated with private investment in India by Stephen Mathias of the Bangalore office of the Kocchar & Co. law firm. (Rohit Kochhar, founder of the firm, is the author of “Doing Business in India,” published by Thomson/West.) Ms. Ajinkya described the tax advantages of utilizing India’s tax treaties with Mauritius, Cyprus and Singapore to structure capital investments, with special recommendations for structures applicable to Sharia investors (governed by Islamic law) and Japanese investors. Mr. Mathias outlined the specific limits on investments in listed and unlisted equities applicable to foreign direct investment (FDI) vehicles and foreign venture capital investment vehicles (FDVI). This session demonstrated a high level of technical knowledge by the law firms involved and made it clear that investing in India should not be considered by the uninitiated or the unrepresented.
Yesterday’s session on legal process outsourcing (LPO) sounded a warning to law firm lawyers everywhere: the LPO industry in India is booming. The panel featured two US-based private practitioners and executives of three India-based LPOs. The US lawyers recited a laundry list of potential obstacles to LPO (e.g., waiver of attorney-client privilege or work product privilege, quality of the Indian attorneys engaged, unauthorized practice of law concerns, ethical concerns about disclosure of the LPO relationship), but these arguments were dismissed by the LPO vendors who insist that their attorneys are not practicing law, either in India or in the US, when they undertake research assignments, litigation support tasks and patent searching for foreign law firms and corporations. (The Indian LPO vendors do not provide services to Indian corporations or firms.) Moreover, the lawyers employed by the LPO firms have US and UK legal training and are supervised by lawyers with experience in some of the best-known law firms in the world. Apparently, working for the LPO firms is quite desirable for Indian lawyers, and the LPOs claim they have no trouble recruiting from the best law schools in India and abroad.
Quislex, a 100-lawyer based LPO headquartered in Hyderabad and New York, is run by two Columbia Law School (NY) graduates, Sundari Pisupati and Ram Vasudevan. Both worked in major law firms before starting Quislex. Ms. Pisupati was valedictorian of her law class at The National Law School of India University, the country’s top law school, with five gold medals for outstanding achievement and medals from the President of India and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India. In India, they would call her a “topper.” Other emerging LPOs include Bodhi Global and New Galexy; the latter’s chief executive graduated from Cornell and his colleagues all trained in law firms in the US or the UK. In addition, “captive LPOs” are cropping up in India, as US companies set up India-based groups of in-house lawyers to supplement their in-house law departments. Dell has 7 lawyers in Bangalore, who act as “virtual contract managers” and “virtual legal counsel” for Dell’s sales team. The Dell LPO is only 18 months old, but will grow to assume additional responsibilities and perhaps even reduce Dell’s reliance on outside law firms, according to Sudha Munireddy, one of the lawyers in the Dell LPO group.
One factor driving the Indian LPO industry (besides comparative low rates of Indian lawyers vis-à-vis their American and European counterparts) is the prohibition on foreign law firms practicing here. (An obstacle to identifying qualified Indian firms is the prohibition on their having web pages.) Without this bar to foreign firms, which some Indian lawyers say will eventually be eased, major US and European law firms might simply acquire LPO offices and operate them as their India branches. (Might this be part of the strategic/growth/exit strategy for Indian LPO vendors….?) Uncertainty about the future of permitted legal structures for Indian and foreign lawyers may make it wise for a law firm or company doing significant business in India to get to know LPO companies while they are emerging, as the best of them might eventually be snapped up by competitors, either as branches of firms or captive corporate legal departments.
Post conference, I hosted a drinks party with Columbia University and Columbia Law School graduates attending the conference (there were 7 of us), ranging from a 2003 MBA to two 1982 law graduates. Columbia Law graduates in India have their LLMs, for the most part, and all are multilingual. In their company, I could not help feeling a little provincial. We found each other by word of mouth and review of the speaker biographies, and as a group, we’re working for India-based LPOs, law firms, major multinational corporations, and the Seoul National University. Our impromptu gathering was my introduction to Grover’s Reserve 2004, a good Indian red wine. It is a Cabernet Shiraz blend, made from French vines imported to India, and the grapes are grown in the Nambi hills outside Bangalore. As I’m so fond of saying, “who knew?”
Regrettably, the conference hotel, the Le Meridien, is inconvenient to the city center, so I could not get to the women’s professional tennis tournament that is happening this week, and missed the Valentine’s Day celebrations which filled the restaurants and nightclubs. Walking is challenging (some might say suicidal) but I navigated the streets for an hour yesterday until I would have had to cross a busy street, where I lost my nerve. Today’s papers reported 4 traffic fatalities in Bangalore yesterday, including two pedestrians mowed down by vehicles and two motorcyclists killed by a truck, so caution seems smart in retrospect. Bangalore lawyers travel by taxi or private car – chauffeured cars charge them 800 rupees (less than $20) for an 8-hour day (including waiting time), but the hotel’s travel desk charges more than 3,100 rupees for the 8-hour day, which is leaving quite a few conventioneers feeling ripped off. Consequently, I haven’t seen much of the so-called “garden city,” which was cited as the second-best city in India to do business according to a World Bank study released this week. (Hyderabad is in first place.)
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Impressive Outsource Shop
I visited one of India's leading business process outsource (BPO) companies to talk to management and supervisors who provide loan processing and loan servicing for US and UK lenders, particularly mortgage companies. The first impression you get is that the "campus" of the company is part of a different world from that of the community it's in. You drive to the site (nearly 2 hours to traverse 20 km) among an absolute jumble of vehicles of every known vintage (cars, motorbikes, moto-rickshaws, bicycles, trucks, and tractors) on incredibly busy (and occasionally unpaved) roadways with virtually no rules or traffic signals, and enter through heavily guarded gates to thoroughly modern office buildings in a landscaped park, with bicycles neatly parked in front of each building. Within the office park, if you have to travel from building to building (the buildings are spread about on more than 50 acres) you take a golf cart. Appointments move with Swiss precision here, and each officer and manager has a specific story to tell about his/her particular contribution to the overall success of the client's business. The enthusiasm of the team is infectious. The customer service managers are convincing in their claims that they actually enjoy and want to help loan applicants understand the available loan products and get them approved. They have initiated outbound calling customer retention programs that claim to reduce loan runoff by 30%.
Management is even more impressive -- they have big plans to not only carry out their US and UK-based clients' missions, but are working on process improvements that will enable their clients to save money. Production cost savings are shared between vendor and client. To keep employees happy, retention bonuses are paid to those who remain on projects for a year or more. Non-compensation benefits are highly desirable as well, and this BPO company has health clubs throughout its campus, food courts, a convenience store, sports teams, and even a hotel for visiting clients and important guests. Key staff spent the night onsite during the water tribunal decision-related strike on Monday February 12, so there was no break in service. I begin to see why American companies that have engaged Indian BPO companies say they do it initially for the price, but stay in India for the quality service. Getting these BPO jobs is not easy, though -- it's a prestige position for a university graduate (and university graduation is a pre-requisite for the entry level positions). The local papers report that only 25% of the university graduates annually are actually qualified for positions in major BPO companies, but one executive told me that the actual number qualified for a top-level BPO company is in the "single digits" as a percentage of university graduates.
Management is even more impressive -- they have big plans to not only carry out their US and UK-based clients' missions, but are working on process improvements that will enable their clients to save money. Production cost savings are shared between vendor and client. To keep employees happy, retention bonuses are paid to those who remain on projects for a year or more. Non-compensation benefits are highly desirable as well, and this BPO company has health clubs throughout its campus, food courts, a convenience store, sports teams, and even a hotel for visiting clients and important guests. Key staff spent the night onsite during the water tribunal decision-related strike on Monday February 12, so there was no break in service. I begin to see why American companies that have engaged Indian BPO companies say they do it initially for the price, but stay in India for the quality service. Getting these BPO jobs is not easy, though -- it's a prestige position for a university graduate (and university graduation is a pre-requisite for the entry level positions). The local papers report that only 25% of the university graduates annually are actually qualified for positions in major BPO companies, but one executive told me that the actual number qualified for a top-level BPO company is in the "single digits" as a percentage of university graduates.
Monday, February 12, 2007
The Cauvery Bandh
The state-wide strike was a non-event from the perspective of businesspeople holed up in the Le Meridien Hotel, because the gates to the hotel were closed and guests had to obtain the permission of the hotel to leave the grounds. (I stayed in and read 3-4 newspapers.) There was no possibility of watching the events on TV because the channels were suppressed all day. This morning's paper reports that the bandh (pronounced "ban" and a synonym for strike) was peaceful and complete, with only the elderly inconvenienced by being ripped off by the few taxis and pedicabs that were running, and most flights from Bangalore airport cancelled. However, the news reportage on the event was much less complete than it would have been in any US media. In fact, the leading stories in today's papers concern the likelihood the India team will win the world cricket match and upcoming valentine's day gift choices! By 8pm, people were back on the street, the restaurants were open again and one would not have known an entire state had virtually shut down for 12 hours. Dinner with another delightful lawyer in a restaurant known for coastal cuisine of southern India (the Kerala state), featuring various curry and vegetarian dishes served on a rice pancake, with large green banana leaves as plates. Also tasted my first Indian wine, which was not bad at all! Today is a visit to a leading software company reputed to have one of the most beautiful "campuses" in India -- the term campus is used to describe what I take to be an office park.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
First Night Out
With a German-born and German-university engineering graduate of Indian descent who's returned to Bangalore to take advantage of the new global economy, I toured the downtown pedestrian area where the Mahatma Ghandi Road and Brigade intersect. On Sunday night, one day in advance of the big water-related strike, the streets were packed with people window shopping and eating ice cream cones. The women, in particular, in brightly colored sarees (each one uses 5-7 meters of fabric), walking in groups and licking their cones, made a charming picture (but one I could not capture in the low light). The highlight had to be the enormous crowd at the Bangalore Central Department Store, which was having a "Happiness Sale" with everything 2-for-1. Bloomingdales and Macy's don't see crowds like this even on Christmas Eve. The prospect of actually shopping was simply too daunting for me, a dedicated shopper. After a good dinner (not better than the Indian restaurants in downtown Washington, though), I returned to the hotel to try and make sense out of the strike called for Monday February 12.
Apparently there is a long-running dispute between the State of Karnakata (where Bangalore is located) and neighboring Tamil Nadu about allocation of water, and recently, the Cauvery Water Tribunal decided in favor of Tamil Nadu in allocating the water from the Cauvery River. To prevent any violence, which occurred 15 years ago for similar reasons of a water dispute, the government has called out 70,000 police, military and other forces to protect the city today. The railroad authority has also called a strike. My young friend Tom said that keeping cars off the road would prevent attacks on those with Tamil Nadu license tags (indicated by TN). The hotel has closed its gates and although I have not left the property today, I have seen a few cars drive by on the main road (Sankey Road) so the ban on cars is not absolute. I will watch for more developments on the amazingly large screen TV in the hotel room.
Apparently there is a long-running dispute between the State of Karnakata (where Bangalore is located) and neighboring Tamil Nadu about allocation of water, and recently, the Cauvery Water Tribunal decided in favor of Tamil Nadu in allocating the water from the Cauvery River. To prevent any violence, which occurred 15 years ago for similar reasons of a water dispute, the government has called out 70,000 police, military and other forces to protect the city today. The railroad authority has also called a strike. My young friend Tom said that keeping cars off the road would prevent attacks on those with Tamil Nadu license tags (indicated by TN). The hotel has closed its gates and although I have not left the property today, I have seen a few cars drive by on the main road (Sankey Road) so the ban on cars is not absolute. I will watch for more developments on the amazingly large screen TV in the hotel room.
Safely Arrived in Bangalore
Not much to report yet on my end, but my colleague Karlyn Stanley (another Virginia based lawyer and speaker at the International Tech Law conference) had an interesting day yesterday visiting Lalbagh Gardens which she likened to Central Park in New York or the Retiro in Madrid; she also saw the Bull Temple before I arrived at 5AM -- you can obtain a blessing at this temple. Not much traffic on the roads at 5AM so I only saw 2 cows and a handful of pedestrians, and was relieved to reach the comfortable Meridien Hotel. Fair warning to all travelers through Heathrow Airport (London) -- you are permitted only one carryon bag, and that includes a purse. There are no exceptions -- you have to check or dispose of anything else, and the authorities are enforcing this rule with a vengeance. More later, after my first Indian dinner tonight (11 February).
Thursday, February 8, 2007
En route to Bangalore
As I head out to the International Technology Law Association meeting in Bangalore, I am advised that there is a municipal strike called for 12 February and that it might be wise to stick to the hotel that day. Watch this blog for more on my travels throughout India, where I will be meeting with financial service providers, attorneys, and technology companies working in the US/India business community. ALN
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