‘Even my jokes are translated’

Is it profitable being in business in China? How tough is the market?
It is profitable and it is tough. Business is lucrative because we have done two or three things that are now bearing fruit. We’ve localised our content to meet the domestic software industry’s needs. I just addressed a gathering of 700 students and even my jokes had to be translated.

Meeting demands of a different business culture couldn’t have been easy either?
No, it wasn’t. For instance, China has many IT companies, but most of them are small, unlike India, where an average IT firm could have 2,000 to 50,000 employees. So, Chinese IT workers multi-task more, and they will have to, until a critical mass of people necessary to specialisation are ready. So, we have to train him differently.

But you have support from the Chinese authorities?
There is a different way of doing business and we had to understand it. In China, we developed a new curriculum—GNIIT Honors—because we are part of the college system, not an add-on to it. We are full-fledged partners of Chinese universities.

China sounds more lucrative than India?
We lost money for the first five years in China. The country is lucrative, but only if you are persistent and willing to change.