Treflor.net contributor Alex Murphy is President at DCM Shriram and a Privilege Member at Rugby Football Union. From time to time he will share his thoughts and observations from his life in Gurgaon, Haryana, India.
A part of living in India is that typically you have staff to help in the home and a driver. Me, I have both a housekeeper and a full-time driver (who doesn’t often get the chance to drive as I love driving). You also notice that there are thousands and thousands of security guards, everywhere. At every shop, every house, every gate, you will find a uniformed security guard acting as some kind of protection, and — to be honest — they are 99.99% ineffective. At the homes of the people I work for these security guards are occasionally armed, but they are still pretty much ineffective.
The whole layer of domestic staff and security I describe provides enormous levels of employment in a country where employment remains hard to find. It is said that the poverty line in India is about 59p per day, and making more that is considered to be of independent means. A member of domestic staff or a security guard will earn about £170 per month, money that is generally paid in cash, an amount that at £5 a day is considered a good living wage. And even though by UK and US terms this seems a pittance, in India it’s considered a good wage and the staff work hard for their money.
I elect not to have live-in staff, even though the house comes with a staff flat. The thought of poor staff members regularly finding a naked, hairy, European sitting eating his cornflakes is more than I want to bestow upon any individual. And this is where one of the huge dilemmas of working in India occurs. No, not a hairy European, but labour.
The workforce in my business is very well educated, with over 60% of my Head Office support staff of 148 having at least an MBA. The level of competency is incredible high in areas such as computing and accounting, but at under £5,000 per annum you find yourself having to make bizarre calculations. For instance, new computer software that will speed up process will cost you £200,000, have a shelf life of about three years, and will require annual service contracts to the value of £35,000. That’s about £300,000 over the life of the software, or £100,000 per annum. It will take some write time and is subject to technical failure. On the other hand, for that same amount I could employ no less than 20 MBAs, assets who would actually deliver me far greater capacity, not be subject to power failure or viruses (save for malaria, perhaps), and who would be mobile as required. So what do you do?
A good example of how all of this works in practice is our central costing cell. The software to run our commercial, technical and drawing capabilities again would be enormous. If the system rejected any of the data then this would require third-party intervention to access the rejection information, go back to source, and resolve. We have 28 bodies processing the info, and if something goes wrong they pick up a phone and say “What did you mean by…….?” and the situation is resolved in under a minute. Now, yes, I’m sure all you computer types will scream about efficiency and process, but it’s a hard and true fact of life that in the more developed economies — those in which you have to pay £50-100,000 per annum to computer and data geeks — that computerisation is a huge cost saver. In India, though, where we are still finding our business feet, there is still have incredible value for money in labour. And it isn’t slavery as it’s all relative to what your rupee buys you. My people are my greatest asset.
My morning today started with me wishing my driver Ravi well before he took my daughter and two friends to Agra and the Taj Mahal for the day. The 6.30 collect became 6.45, as three teenagers did what teenagers do and took their time. For the first time ever the look on Ravi’s face was one of “We are going to the Taj, is there really any need for this fashion statement!”
Only in India…..
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