Cultural differences
Doing business in any new country has its challenges: Indian real estate customs include stamp taxes impacting transparency, limited title availability and regulated capital repatriation (lock-in period of three years). There is no standard for building quality and cultural differences can cause friction loss. While western business people tend to simultaneously concentrate on a task at hand and build a relationship, Indian business people focus on building a relationship first and —maybe — do business later on the basis of the built-up trust. Westerners appreciate a realistic self assessment of what a potential partner can or cannot do, yet in India it is almost shameful to admit the inability to perform a task. The standard response to any inquiry or request therefore is: “no problem”, which can well cause problems later. Nonetheless, the growing experience in dealing with western partners and employers lets India’s business world become familiar with western work ethics as well as quality and productivity expectations — and vice versa.

One of the key drivers of India’s economy and India’s real estate markets is the offshoring. According to AT Kearney’s “Offshore Location Attractiveness Index”, India is a clear winner followed with some distance by China. In fact, India accounts for about 65 percent of the global offshoring market. More than 500 universities in India graduate approximately 2.5 million young Indians annually of which 350,000 are engineers (compared to 70,000 engineers per annum in the US and about 100,000 in Europe). India’s academics are well educated, highly motivated, speak English fluently and ask for only a fraction of the salary of their equivalent in western Europe or the US. International companies from all over the world come to India to hire them. They have been relocating their IT Support and their Business Processing to India for more than a decade now and more and more smaller companies as well follow suit.