Does Your Company Have an India Strategy?

by Vijay Govindarajan, Rajendra Srivastava, Anup Srivastava and Aman Rajeev Kulkarni

June 27, 2023, Updated September 26, 2023

HBR Staff/anand purohit/Getty Images

Summary.

At the end of financial year 2022, the price-to-book (P/B) ratio for the European consumer products giant Unilever PLC stood at six. The same number for its subsidiary in India, Hindustan Unilever, was twice that, at twelve. This difference is not because the Indian subsidiary is a young or small company — on the contrary, the Indian subsidiary is a 90-year-old company with a market cap of $76 billion. Nor is this an isolated instance.

Vijay Govindarajan is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, a Dartmouth-wide chair and the highest distinction awarded to Dartmouth faculty; a Faculty Partner in the Silicon Valley incubator Mach49; and Senior Advisor at the strategy consulting firm Acropolis Advisors. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. His latest book is Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future. His Harvard Business Review articles “Engineering Reverse Innovations” and “Stop the Innovation Wars” won McKinsey Awards for best article published in HBR. His HBR articles “How GE Is Disrupting Itself” and “The CEO’s Role in Business Model Reinvention” are HBR all-time top-50 bestsellers. Follow him on LinkedIn.

@vgovindarajan

Rajendra Srivastava is the Novartis Professor of Marketing Strategy and Innovation at the Indian School of Business. He has served Dean at ISB. He has also served as Provost at Singapore Management University and as Senior Associate Dean at Emory University and The University of Texas at Austin. Srivastava is a strong proponent for inter-disciplinary research and collaboration between industry, government, and academia. He has worked with over 50 MNCs across more than 50 countries and 5 continents. Reach him at LinkedIn.

Anup Srivastava holds Canada Research Chair in Accounting, Decision Making, and Capital Markets and is a full professor at Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. In a series of HBR articles, he examines the management implications of digital disruption. He specializes in the valuation and financial reporting challenges of digital companies. Follow Anup on LinkedIn.

Aman Rajeev Kulkarni works as a Research Associate at the Indian School of Business, following his graduation from ESSEC Business School with a Masters in Finance. His work is primarily focused on bridging the research gap among Finance, Marketing & Accounting, promoting financial inclusion for MSMEs and leveraging business-innovation thinking to address corporate challenges. Reach him at LinkedIn.

Read more on Global strategy or related topics Globalization and Growth strategy

Does Your Company Have an India Strategy?

Summary.

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