India Inc has found another reason to smile -- students of the Kellogg School of Management in the US are keen to work here.
Says Charmaine Hussain, a first-year student at Kellogg: "India has seen phenomenal growth in the past 10 years and 95 per cent of us are looking for business opportunities here. Students in the US feel this country has a lot to offer."
Hussain is one of 20 students from the management school who are here on a 15-day programme to understand the opportunities and trends in the domestic industry.
They have been meeting industrialists like Ratan Tata, Adi Godrej and Azim Premji as well as Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie and external affairs ministry officials. The programme is being supervised by Professor Mark Finn.
Iqbal Brainch echoes Hussain's enthusiasm. Says the part-time Kellogg student and investment banker at Morgan Stanley: "This programme has taught us that India holds a huge potential for American business. Today, more and more people in the US want to work here, and they are not necessarily Indians."
The students are impressed with Ratan Tata. Most of them are looking forward to work with business houses that are receptive to change and not married to tradition.
Premji told the students about the challenges he faced while getting business from abroad.
The visit is part of an annual programme of the Kellogg School of Management called global initiatives in management, an intensive course on global business leadership designed by the students.
The students work out a 10-week curriculum with the faculty adviser and co-ordinate a two-week international field programme, during which they meet business and government leaders and conduct research before completing their final presentations and reports.
In India, the students also had meetings with several companies like Hindustan Lever, Modicare, the Pantaloon group, BPL Mobile, Tata Telecom, the Boston Consulting Group, Motorola and HDFC Bank.
The programme began in 1990 with a trip to the erstwhile Soviet Union. Today, nearly 400 students participate in the programme annually.