Times of India (Dec 31, 2006) carries an excellent piece by Swaminathan Aiyar the decisive columnist with guts; he talks of the change that is taking place in the minds of Indian businessmen. From being afraid of foreign companies “finishing off” Indian companies they have started to think differently and successfully attempting acquisitions abroad. Even a small company like Subex Systems acquired Azure for a whopping $ 140 million last year. Aiyar goes on to suggest that Indian companies should attempt major acquisitions; the likes of IBM, GM, Exxon and Citibank. They are far-fetched today; interestingly they may NOT be far-fetched tomorrow.
I remember my days in 1997 when I was teaching the MBA class at Rutgers (The State University of New Jersey) when some Chinese students in the class talked of Chinese companies acquiring big American companies. It was far fetched at that time; but in 2005 Lenovo happened (Chinese company Legend Computers acquiring IBM PC business!)
Wait for 2015 and some of these far-fetched wishes may become true!
Of course, they must be done in all humility and with NO arrogance whatsoever (the way Infosys approached every major achievement – NASDAQ listing, NASDAQ opening from Mysore and entering NASDAQ 100)
