India's missing managerial capital

One of the great things about the periodic visits by marquee Indian-origin chief executive officers (CEOs) such as Alphabet and Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella is that they leave middle-class Indians basking in the warm glow of reflected glory.

- KANIKA DATTA

Both usually pay obligatory obeisance to that ultra-scarce resource in India: Human capital. Mr Nadella on his recent visit said: "There is no denying that anyone who does not tap into India's human capital is making a choice to not be competitive."

At one level, Mr Nadella's statement can be read as an urgent message to the incoming Trump administration not to monkey around with the H-1B visa system that Silicon Valley has so profitably exploited for decades. It can also be interpreted as a reflection of the emerging global capability centres in India that enable US corporations to deploy IT-educated Indian "human capital" at minimal cost. This is the usual understanding of such complimentary statements. What few successful Indian-origin CEOs choose to address is why Indian businesses have not produced equivalents to Nadella, Pichai and others like them in the Indian business environment. After all, there is no shortage of top quality graduates from India's premier engineering and management institutes in Indian companies.