Our Mumbai office is staffed by a relatively new Bessemer investor, Anand Sridharan, who has launched a blog ("Seriously Clueless") about capitalizing new ventures in India. Experienced in both Indian and US culture, Anand highlights the differences in our economies, explaining, for example, that the cheap labor pool in India completely saps any demand that might exist for capital goods like vacuum cleaners and high-volume flour mills. Anand also cautions against trying to sell $2 ringtones to a nation whose workers earn only $2 a day, and need those wages to pay for food, shelter, transportation, medicine and children's education.Contrary to my earlier characterization of Bessemer's team, Anand has actually worked as a consultant inside a Tata Steel mill, where he witnessed the Bessemer conversion process first-hand.
David,
ReplyDeleteWith offices in China, India, Northeast and CA - how in the world does Bessemer have partnership meetings with everyone on hand? I'm just curious if that's no longer the organizational process once you expand globally like that.
We meet every Monday by video conference using polycom equipment over IP. This is something we already had to figure out even as a bi-coastal US firm, so the international offices were easy to add to the Monday meetings.
ReplyDeleteDavid, unrelated to Anand, but I thought you might enjoy these high tech slippers. They are no Bose headphones, but certainly a smart solution. http://news.com.com/2061-11200_3-5887954.html?part=rss&tag=5887954&subj=news
ReplyDelete