Word: indianizing
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William Bissell inherited a company built on good intentions. His father, John Bissell, went to India in 1958 on a Ford Foundation grant, married an Indian woman and never left. The Bissells started a business exporting handmade textiles, and their company, Fabindia, thrived on sending traditional crafts to the West, just in time for the first wave of baby-boomer bohemian chic...
...focusing on the domestic market. Starting with a handful of boutiques, Bissell created a 110-store, $65 million national brand - without straying far from its homespun roots. That makes Fabindia an early beneficiary of the figure upon whom many regional and international economic hopes are now being pinned: the Indian consumer. But when Bissell looks into India's future, he is troubled. "For those of us at the top of the dungheap, the system is working absolutely brilliantly," he says. For everyone else, corruption and the lack of basic public services like water, electricity and education threaten to undo...
...national bureaucracy; giving substantive powers to elected neighborhood councils; creating a results-based, incentivized school system under the eye of a "standards authority." A self-described policy wonk, Bissell is clearly more interested in the details of governance than in big ideas (the subject of several recent books by Indian CEOs). "Let's go into the trenches," he says, with the air of the classic patrician philanthropist, "and see what needs to be done." (See pictures of India's health care crisis...
...like a fish market," says Jawed Habib, fondly surveying the Sunday-afternoon hubbub of his South New Delhi hair salon, one of 12 he runs in the Indian capital alone. Heaving with stylists wearing bold red-and-black shirts emblazoned with JAWED HABIB PRO TEAM, the salon calls to mind less the chaos of a fish market than the disciplined efficiency of a well-run kitchen. His golden quiff defying gravity, the 46-year-old Habib serves as both head chef and maître d', helping a matron into her chair, judging the angle of a junior stylist...
...chair outlet in Mumbai recently churned out 186 cuts in one day. This month, Habib will launch hair-care products for direct sale on TV, "so that customers in Canada and the U.S. can buy them," in addition to clients of his academies in Mauritius, Singapore and Kenya. "If Indian doctors and IT experts are so popular throughout the world, why not Indian hairdressers?" he asks. "It's our turn to capture the glow." (See 25 authentic Asian experiences...