Go India

GLOBALS is one of those fast-growing Indian IT companies that Westerners simultaneously admire and fear. Founded in 2000, it already has offices in 11 countries and customers around the world. The chairman and chief executive, Suhas Gopinath, is just 24 years old. Most of his employees are also in their mid-twenties.

Mr Gopinath is an illustration of a striking business revolution. Emerging-world businesses have traditionally been obsessed with seniority. Ambitious youngsters in countries like India have been equally obsessed with job security. Well-paying jobs, preferably with multinational firms, are the key to success in the marriage market. But this is changing rapidly.

Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, reports that he now comes across mould-breaking young leaders wherever he goes in India. They are even to be found in big companies such as ICICI, a leading bank, Hindustan Unilever, a consumer-goods giant, and Comat Technologies, which provides information to rural Indians. Vivek Wadhwa, an American academic who studies entrepreneurship, says he is inundated with requests for meetings whenever he visits the emerging world. He met 125 fledgling entrepreneurs during a recent trip to New Delhi and will talk to as many as he can manage in Beijing soon.

The rise of young entrepreneurs is extending the meaning of the demographic dividend. Demographers have often noted that most of the emerging world will stay young while the rich world ages. In 2020 the median age in India will be 28, compared with 38 in America, 45 in western Europe and 49 in Japan. But the dividend will be paid not just in the form of more favourable dependency ratios but also in a more entrepreneurial business culture. Young people are innately more inclined to overthrow the existing order than are their elders. This predisposition is being reinforced by two big changes in the emerging world.

The first is the information-technology revolution. The Boston Consulting Group calculates that there are already about 610m internet users in the BRICI countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia). BCG predicts that this number will nearly double by 2015. And in one respect many consumers in emerging markets are leapfrogging over their Western peers. They are much more likely to access the internet via mobile devices (which are ubiquitous in the emerging world) rather than PCs. That gives local entrepreneurs an advantage, says Rob Salkowitz, the author of “Young World Rising”. Whereas Western companies are hampered by legacy systems and legacy mindsets, they can build their companies around the coming technology.

 

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