Doing Business in India For Dummies®

Diversifying India’s Classes

To take advantage of the opportunities in India for your business, you need to fully understand the socioeconomic diversity of the Indian population. After all, your customers, clients, colleagues, and employees all lie in this vast population.

If you’ve been reading this entire chapter, you may have run across the earlier section that discussed the structure of the Indian caste system (see “Classifying the Community”). The caste system is becoming less prevalent as time goes on. And in its place, India’s population divides instead into classes, similar in many respects to the socioeconomic classes in the West.

Indian ties: They’re bound to last Considering India’s widespread fondness for the bonds of communities, it’s no surprise that family communities in India are large and tightly knit, often including a whole clan. This extended family has very strong claims on individual Indians, which can be a double-edged sword in business. For example, Westerners may often feel frustrated by an Indian’s propensity to take off for a wedding, funeral, or naming ceremony of a second cousin twice removed, located in a faraway corner of the country. These occasions may seem like questionable reasons to miss work, but in India these commitments are honored. The good news is that these community ties can be used in your favor when you need your business community—your ...