How to copy India

I am still overwhelmed with the amount of information we received from a Chief Secretary who is like a Minister of ITE and Commerce from India’s Telangana Province, Mr. Jayesh Ranjan. He received us women from FICCI-FLO Ladies Organization and PHILWEN, Philippine Women’s Economic Network, at the Secretariat in Hyderabad, a city famous for my favorite Indian food called Biryani. In fact, I chose Hyderabad as I imagined tasting many variants of this globally-popular dish made with basmati rice. But there is so much about Hyderabad as we learned from his excellent oral extemporaneous explanation.

First, they practice Ease of Doing Business seriously. In fact, you can start construction without a business license and the whole process of getting a permit must only take 15 days maximum. Whoever causes a delay from his staff is fined the equivalent number of days’ salary commensurate to the days of delay. Not a bad idea at all.

Second, they create high quality infrastructure for companies to start their business. They created specific industrial parks for life sciences, aerospace, food parks near agriculture sources, textile parks near sources of cotton, etc. In Life sciences, let us not forget that India manufactures 40 percent of the world’s vaccines and 40 percent of all pharmaceutical products.

They have skilled manpower available for investors who build businesses inside these theme parks. Colleges and universities in the area teach new skills that are needed by the investing companies. They established TASK or Telagana Academy of Skills and Knowledge, specifically to provide graduates to these industries.

They have incentives for viability of businesses such as reduced power rates, lower price of land and they price match with other states. India is a federation of states and each state has autonomy to make its own laws. In fact, land can be priced at 30-50 percent below market inside the industrial parks, making one’s business already gain a profit on that alone, even if business has not yet started.

They have an innovation ecosystem and create innovation partnerships. If one were to convert $50 billion in investments, Telangana converts 85 percent of investments while other Indian states only have a 45-50 percent conversion rate. Repeat investments are high at 24 percent, which is really impressive.

They have WOMEN programs that upskill young girls in STEM – Science, Tech, Engineering and Math – while they reskill mothers who come back from long maternity leaves and make them catch up with new positions and updated salary levels. What really impressed the PHILWEN delegates is that FICCI-FLO actually made a FLO industrial park for women-run businesses such as Polmon for instrumentation, precast cement fences and Paneluxe boards for furniture. They also created the WE hub, Women Entrepreneurs hiring skilled women and upskilling the rest to be able to get good pay levels, comparable with and some even higher than their male counterparts.

On this FLO Industrial Park investment alone, FICCI Ladies Organization or FLO already made profits for their NGO’s coffers, allowing them to undertake projects uplifting women. FLO’s tag or campaign after all is “The Power to Empower.” And they surely have empowered many women leaders to build ecosystems where women can thrive and be skilled in today’s newest career and job requirements.

These are just some of the secrets why Telangana is the hub to emulate, copy or replicate in our country. If we can start with a forward-thinking region or province, we can simply copy what this progressive Indian state did and it is a surefire way to make a profitable and sustainable business, power rates notwithstanding. Well, one can always use renewable energy to begin with. And the rest is pure political will. As the saying goes, build it and they will come.

In one factory, we were introduced to the most modern facilities in making instruments for other factories, medical labs and the like. This started as manufacture of pollution monitors, thus it was called POLMON run by Usharani Manne, a FICCI-FLO member. Today, it has adapted towards AI, has trained the next generation and kept in step with the needs of pharmaceutical companies.

In another plant, we saw how they make aluminum honeycomb panels for making furniture without cutting trees, a remarkably sustainable, eco-friendly, tree-loving pursuit called Paneluxe headed by M. Srivani. In fact, we even planted a guava tree, as a memento of our factory visit as PHILWEN from the Philippines. And there were many more places to visit if we had more time. If we are to benchmark, this is the place to replicate and set our goals to. The FLO Industrial Park is a Women’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.

Already we PHILWEN trustees are thinking of a similar idea in one of our processing zones. And I say, why not? We are already raising the numbers of women engineering graduates and at TESDA Women’s Center (TWC), we are training women and young girls in NTT or non-traditional trades. We, in fact, hold stakeholder consultations to find out from industry what skills they now need so TWC can offer courses in these new fields like training in laser cutting operations, new construction materials and new processes in automotive manufacturing. We have the ingredients for a similar ecosystem and we just need to thread it and find a local government willing to operationalize a park like that of Telangana. Any takers? We can talk soon and fast to replicate the FLO Industrial Park.

As for PHILWEN, we are already developing strategies to replicate the good practices of FLO as I write this account of our visit to India. And we had just sealed a partnership to share best practices, collaborate for trade between and among our members and set the standard for an India-ASEAN collaboration. In 2025, we will invite FLO to showcase our best practices together when we visit the next cities on our Indian map. If you want to come, let us know or better yet be a part of PHILWEN (www.philwen.org).