German-Indian exchange of experiences

The first students of the German-Indian MBA programme in International Management from the Center for European Business Studies (CEBS) at Reutlingen University will graduate in July. On 30^th May 2011, the students had the opportunity to speak to company representatives in an informal environment during an event designed to exchange experiences.

Prof. Dr. Dennis A. De, director of CEBS, welcomed participants to the event. In his introduction, De emphasised the uniqueness of CEBS as the only centre for European business studies in India operated by Europeans and supported by the EU.  He also introduced the scope of activites of the Center.

First of all, in July the centre will see its first Indian MBA graduates with Indo-European business competencies. They will not only know the Indian market but will also have gained an experience of Germany and learned basic German during their studies.

Secondly, training for companies will be made available e.g. in the area of logistics and supply chain in India and Germany. Thirdly, there will be online courses for Indian universities and fourthly an annual academic conference which this year will take place in December and will deal with the theme of “Perspectives on India’s Growth”

In order to motivate the participants to exchange experiences, there was also a speech by Jan Siebert who told of his own experiences as a project manager during the India expansion of his company, Eisenmann.

Eisenmann is a typical representative of the German target group of CEBS. It is a family-owned medium enterprise with an international focus, which would like to expand into new markets. The company manufactures products in the areas of general finishing technology, environmental technology and material flow automation and only started doing business in India one and a half years ago.

Now the company has 60 staff in India and plans to expand to further locations in the country. Siebert spoke about the process of looking for their target market, a suitable location, making fact-finding trips and taking over a company in India, which greatly sped up the process of expanding staff numbers.

He also mentioned how he had worked together with 6 students of SP Jain Institute of Management, the Indian partner-school of CEBS. The students worked for the company HQ in Germany in 2010 and carried out studies in areas such as procurement or marketing in the Indian market.

As well as his general account of the processes involved in setting up the business, Siebert also told his audience about some personal experiences. He said he had had a very positive experience in India and was impressed by the openness of the people there. Of course there were also some things which Germans had to adapt to, for example bureaucracy and a different awareness of time and resources.

Cultural differences and communications issues arising from these were often the main cause of problems and provided a challenge for German and Indian companies. This challenge, he explained, could however be overcome by employees from both cultures with the help of more information about the other country. This explains the high significance of suitable training sessions.

Following this introduction, the participants moved on to the informal part of the evening and were able to speak to one another, exchange experiences and network, making new contacts or deepen existing contacts.