Bombay businessman Suresh Vazirani today told the international business conference ‘Globalization : from conflict to opportunity’ how his company has met the challenges of globalization in the face of international competition. Transasia Biomedical, which he founded in 1980, exports diagnostic machines for blood diseases to 30 countries.

Bombay businessman Suresh Vazirani today told the international business conference ‘Globalization : from conflict to opportunity’ how his company has met the challenges of globalization in the face of international competition. Transasia Biomedical, which he founded in 1980, exports diagnostic machines for blood diseases to 30 countries.

The company is India’s market leader. But it faced severe competition from American, German and Japanese manufacturers when, between 1995-97, the Indian government reduced import tariffs from 40 per cent to five per cent, in compliance with World Trade Organization rules. ‘What could we do?’ posed Vazirani. ‘Our sales were going down. We realized that globalization was not only for these countries but also for us. We reduced our costs and decided to compete with all the other players in the world. Efficiency was the key word-how to reduce man hours.’ The company was manufacturing 5,000 machines annually for the domestic market, but calculated that it could produce 20,000 annually for the world market.

He admitted that he was shocked when the new efficiencies introduced enabled the company to consider laying off 60 out of its 350 employees. ‘How could we lay off the very people who had made us efficient? We refused to do so. We put more people into sales and servicing.’ Bombay hospitals using the equipment were usually happy if an engineer arrived within four hours of a machine failure. But with the extra staff available the company decided to reduce this to two hours. Thirty people were also transferred to research and development. ‘In the next five years we can continue to compete with other machines. We are now technically as advanced as Japanese and European products,’ Vazirani claimed. The company sells to Germany and has a memorandum of understanding with a Japanese importer. It has continued to grow and now employs 450 people. Last year’s profits were $1.6 million on a turnover of $16 million and the anticipated turnover this year is $20 million.

Vazirani said that he had to spend 60 per cent of his time in tackling corruption issues, and the company employs two lawyers full time to address the court cases which come because of the company’s policy of refusing to pay bribes. He told, as an example, how two ‘petty government officials’ had demanded a bribe of $100 for a licence to operate a fountain in the company’s lunch area. There were similar fountains all over Bombay but, Vazirani found, no licenses had been issued for 20 years. His was the first case of its kind at the magistrate’s court and it took his lawyers four years costing $4,000 to deal with it.

‘Globalization is here to stay. So we might as well make it an opportunity rather than seeing it as a threat,’ Vazirani told the conference, which is being held, 20 to 24 July, at the international conference centre of Initiatives of Change in Caux. India faced many structural changes in the face of globalization, he said, but above all there was a need ‘to develop a compassionate and caring society, through a lot of individuals making personal choices.’

Vazirani was speaking alongside publisher Dr Frances Pinter, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, the London School of Economics, who outlined the vital rôle of civil society organisations, including Non-Governmental Organisations, in the processes of globalization.

She described civil society as the ‘space’ between the state, the market and individual households. Civil society organisations were essentially private, not-for-profit distributing, self-governing and voluntary, often from the advocacy, activist sector, and included religiously motivated bodies. In the Netherlands, for example, 38 per cent of all adults gave part of their time to non-profit organisations.

Global (as opposed to local) civil society was when an activity resonated across borders, she said. This often involved the aid sector. Sweden in 1999, for instance, channelled 29 per cent of its bilateral aid through NGOs. Much of the delivery of the World Bank’s loans to developing countries is subcontracted to NGOs. But cross border activity could also end up with anomalies. When the international Campaign to Ban Landmines won the Nobel Peace Prize, it realised it didn’t have a central bank account to receive the prize money.

Addressing the issue of cash flows and accountability, she said that civil society foundations were often supported from the ‘ill-gotten gains’ of corporations ‘who then end up being attacked on the streets of Seattle. So we live in a very intertwined world.’ Whilst civil society bodies gave a voice to citizens, there were still people left out of global civil society altogether. ‘Does everyone in the Amazon think that (campaigning businesswoman) Anita Roddick’s ideas are helpful? Do they have a voice? The answer is no.’

Michael Smith

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