Doing business in India
There are 18 major languages spoken in India and over 1,600 regional dialects. Hindi is the official language of India, spoken by about half the population, mostly in North India. Hindi can be traced back to the 7th or 8th century. The dialect that has been chosen as the official language is Khariboli using the Devanagari script. Some of the many other dialects of Hindi are Brajbhasha, Bundeli, Awadhi, Marwari, Maithili and Bhojpuri. Hindi is spoken by over 437 million people worldwide.
Some of the major Indic languages (ie the languages of the whole Indian sub-continent) are Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Bengali is the state language of West Bengal where many people only speak Bengali. Urdu is the state language of Jammu & Kashmir, was developed in Delhi and is mainly spoken by the Muslim population. It is written in the Arabic script and includes many Persian words. Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages in the world.
Although English is widely used for government, legal purposes and further education, the Indian Ministry of Education is concerned that only 1% of the population speaks English well enough for business purposes, and is seeking to remedy this as India plays an increasing role in the world economy.
When doing business in India consider the following:
· At a first meeting make sure you present and exchange business cards. Find out what the local language is and have your card translated. If you travel widely and do not wish to have several languages on your card, you might choose Hindi.
· Be sure to receive and give with your right hand.
· Make sure the card is put away respectfully and not simply pushed into a trouser pocket.
· Meetings in India will generally begin with friendly small talk. This may include personal questions about family and is seen as a way of building rapport and trust before business.
