The business scene in Delhi

At the reception desk of a traditional Indian power company, we were informed that the person whom we were going to see was busy in a meeting and that it might take a while until we would see him. So instead, a manager was introduced to us. The manager invited us to his desk and gave us some time to talk about our product. However, he never made eye contact nor gave us his business card. Our sales person went on to describe CACHATTO.

After a while, the manager told us to go to another place and introduced us to his boss, a chief manager, in his office room. Our sales person started to describe our product again to the chief manager, and they started to talk in Hindi. The chief manager, busy with continuous incoming calls, seemed to have been convinced by our product. I was sipping the cup of vegetable soup served instead of coffee.

Finally, we were shown to the general manager's office room. Together with the two managers, the four of us went into his office and finally I was able to converse with him. We gave a demonstration of our product and he was impressed with what we had. He promised that on the next occasion, they would evaluate our product.

After the meeting with the general manager, the manger took us back to his desk and for the first time, made eye contact and gave us his business card. It's required for us to be patient where a different business culture exists. Once you make an appointment with business people in Japan, you'd never cancel it unless you really have an emergent situation that disables the event; needless to say, it is a very rare case.