A Ground-level View of India's New Opportunities and Challenges
India is a country with immense potential, but faces significant challenges as it tries to become a bigger player in the global economic arena, government and business leaders told a team of Wharton professors who recently visited Mumbai, Hyderabad and New Delhi. The group was in India as part of Wharton's Faculty International Seminar, and the scholars met with a variety of stakeholders from India's business community to discuss sectors including manufacturing, education, services and health care. Among their observations: increasing investments in education and a potentially greater role for the service sector in India's future growth.

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NIIT Technologies' Arvind Thakur: 'The Basic Theme Was More for Less'
Like other Indian IT companies, NIIT Technologies felt the impact of the recession in the West, its major market. The company's approach was not to cut rates, but to enhance service levels. Future growth for the firm, however, is expected to come from Asia, says CEO Arvind Thakur, in an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton.

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Labor Backlash: Multinationals Feel the Heat of Worker Dissatisfaction in India
Multinational companies (MNCs) operating in India were drawn to the country by a cheap and educated pool of workers. But some of these firms view the Indian workforce as argumentative and unwilling to accept the regime ushered in by the MNCs. Facing a spate of strikes, agitations -- and, at times, violent uprisings -- what can MNCs do to get labor relations back on track?

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Hero Motors’ Pankaj Munjal: Going Global with a Passion for Wheels
Cars and bikes are in Pankaj Munjal's blood -- his family founded the US$5 billion Hero Group, the New Delhi-based enterprise comprising 20 companies including the world's largest manufacturer of bicycles. As managing director of Hero Motors and Hero Cycles, Munjal oversees the company's two-wheeler production and its global auto components business. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, he spoke about why his firm is focused on the small-car market, what he looks for in new hires, and what toys he likes to take for a drive.

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India's Online Booksellers Try to Write a New Chapter
For several years, online bookstores in India struggled to survive. Some didn't. Today, a new breed is writing a different story, attempting to bring e-commerce for books into the mainstream. But it is not going to be easy: Delivery and marketing challenges abound, and observers say many Indian customers are leery about using their credit cards to buy books on the Internet. Still others lack credit cards entirely, or speak and read in a language other than English, leaving them unable to access the majority of online bookstores' inventory.

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HDFC Bank's Aditya Puri on India's 'Best Opportunity' in Financial Services
After having escaped the wrath of the global economic downturn, Indian banking is upbeat, according to Aditya Puri, CEO and managing director of HDFC Bank. Opportunities abound for Indian banks as the country is poised to achieve double-digit GDP growth in two years, he says in an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton.

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