Setting Off In Search of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and More!

So come the 6^th December, after nearly 11 years in Hong Kong I have decided to make a move and leave these fine shores of Hong Kong for a new adventure and to ply my trade elsewhere! Having had the most formative years of my career in Hong Kong, growing from a junior consultant to a business owner, during which time I has also started my own family, it felt an appropriate time in the middle of my life to throw caution to the wind and persuade my partners (both professional and personal) that I would be the ideal candidate to set up an office in India. Bangalore to be precise.

My argument was based largely on the fact I had never even been to the city, I have no personal network there on any level and so there would be no ‘baggage’ to worry about on me entering a totally new country let alone new market. They also have a thriving micro-brewery industry too – which was possibly the most penetrating research I had managed. My business partner’s rather too swift response had a somewhat more calculated view to it. They believed that having our 3^rd office in India would enable us to more effectively serve our international clients who have an equally diversified city network in India. On a local level it would help us focus on the FinTech hub that Bangalore has become and compliment a lot of the rest of the work we are doing in the APAC region already. On reflection I somewhat suspect that perhaps I’d somehow been unwittingly led to this point, or maybe that lays too much credit at my partner’s feet?!

From a family perspective they actually ended up being the driving force behind the speed of the move which rapidly gained momentum. In a month my wife has pretty much single handedly organized our move, rented out our flat in Hong Kong, found the children a school and reached out to various friends of friends to establish a readymade social network!  Despite my protests to my wife (whose primary experience of India was a holiday in a beach hut in Goa), that the rest of India was not actually as portrayed in the film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, she is too excited to take heed and focused on the prospect of a new adventure for the family. I’ve since realised the definition of ‘an adventure’ is actually determined by each individual’s perspective. For my 7 year old son, once he learnt that there were tigers and elephants in India he is ecstatic. My daughter on the other hand is just thrilled about the possibility of moving out of a flat into a house with stairs!

For me it is definitely a new challenge professionally and personally. I’ve never had the chance to set up a new office in a new country while settling in a young family to a new school in a new country at the same time – what could possibly go wrong?! As I have travelled there extensively over the last 2 years visiting clients in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad, interviewing, meeting and training new team members, I have to say I am pleased it won’t be a ‘cold’ start. The work we have done and are doing there is a credit to the team who have already built an extensive business. Personally my main aim is to provide support to the existing senior management where I can, build up a Bangalore presence, as well as ensuring we continue to build a strong Asia focused platform for our clients and consultants to operate from.

In many ways India has a number of parallels to what China and Hong Kong was like when I first arrived here in 2006. My head spins sometimes though with numbers when talking to clients about the number of headcount they expect to hire in a year! However as we are only focused mid/senior levels in the market and have industry and functional specialization it reduces the volumes we can/want to focus on, but paradoxically has enabled us to make some rapid inroads into the market on which we plan to build.

As more people have become aware of our imminent move the more questions I have received, and then the more I realise how unprepared we really are! Where are you staying when you arrive? Don’t know. Do you have a house yet? No. Where’s your office? Ummm…do you know Bangalore? No? Good. It’s in the centre. What are you doing for Christmas? Will be sitting on a beach somewhere waiting for our shipment of furniture to arrive I expect. Bangalore’s not by the sea, is it? No. Which beach will be you on? …*@#$%!!!

While there will be an element of sadness at leaving my home for the last 10+ years, I look forward to being able to update you in early 2017 and give you my perspective of what is and isn’t so different about the India market and a bit of insight into life in India and my new adventure! I wish you all the best for the remainder of 2016, in the meantime I need to go book some plane tickets now…