Outlook Business

In the 17 years since economic reforms kicked in, much has been written about liberalisation and its effects. Writers seeking to have the last word on what defined the success of Indian companies have been popping up a dime a dozen. Rajnish Karki, who specialises in strategy and organisation design, does not quite fall in the wannabe category. His effort, Competing With The Best: Strategic Management Of Indian Companies, contains useful ideas on what India Inc can do to help itself.

It is no secret that Indian behemoths today, especially family-run businesses, are still sceptical of openly making available privileged information. Governance, if anything, is still taboo, and Karki hits the mark when he calls for an overhaul of disclosure norms. As a result, Karki opines, the capital market in India, as in any developing country, isn’t a reliable go-to place for information. By his reckoning, the industry is going to be inefficient for another decade. In fact, he adds, most Indian companies will need another 10 years to achieve the level of global competence that their ‘peers’ worldwide already enjoy.

One term that the author bandies about liberally throughout the book is configuration, claiming that it is a strategy that Indian companies can use to distinguish themselves on the world stage. Karki says that most Indian firms fall into two broad categories: those expanding at home and those expanding abroad. He cites the example of ITC, calling it an India-focused diversified company that branched out from tobacco and cut its teeth in the FMCG space. While ITC made its mark in India, the Tatas powered their way to the world stage, largely through the inorganic route. Karki has presented many such examples of Indian companies seizing the liberalisation opportunity with both hands.

While the book makes many pertinent points, it could have done much more. In his introduction to the tome, Karki says that he hopes to evolve an "original approach to the strategic management of Indian companies." When viewed in that context, his vision for how Indian companies should establish themselves on the world stage is nothing more than textbook fluff. Karki’s conclusion that Indian companies are yet to target overseas markets might have to be taken with a pinch of salt. It is hard to overestimate the fact that Asian countries are now bullish on foreign bases. All said and done, this is a dry-and-dust book that is too caught up in the idiom of business. There is certainly rigour in the way the author has tried to put forth his views. However, in the final analysis, most of them are pedagogical in nature and readers with short attention spans may give the book a slip.