Gurcharan Das (Official Website)

Golden Arches East

Although the strident criticism against American fast food has died and 34 McDonald’s restaurants have quietly opened in India, critics of globalisation don’t tire of reminding us that the world is increasingly becoming a copy of America. McDonald’s amazing success in a hundred countries has impressed business students for years, but to others the expression McWorld conjures scary images of cultural imperialism and a uniform, standardised, homogenized consumer world. Continue reading…

Indian Business Families

The essay attempts to address the following issues related to the structure of Indian business:

1) Indian business is overwhelmingly owned and managed by families. Is a family firm necessarily at a disadvantage versus a professionally managed firm? Will an economy based on smaller family business grow slower or be disadvantaged compared to one based on large professional companies? Continue reading…

Coming of Age

An extraordinary thing happened this summer whose significance has escaped almost everyone. While the nation was engrossed in petrol pumps, Shivani’s murder, and other weighty matters, Wipro, the software company in Bangalore, quietly bought Spectramind, a call centre in Delhi, from ChrysCapital, a venture capital fund. The call centre was valued at Rs 606 crores and this landmark event sent a strong positive signal to the global financial world that India may finally be coming of age. Continue reading…