Kiwis need to stop thinking small, says Indian tycoon

Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UID), speaks during an interview in his office in New Delhi, India. Photo / Getty Images

Indian billionaire Nandan Nilekani says scale is a problem New Zealand companies need to overcome to crack the growing Indian market.

Nilekani has been twice named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people and is the former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is providing all 1.2 billion Indian residents with a unique identification number.

He is also co-founder of Infosys Technologies, which has 100,000 employees.

Nilekani understands scale, even in his philanthropic efforts. After losing a bid to get into politics last year, he's poured US$10 million ($13.56 million) into a not-for-profit initiative, ekStep, which is developing a platform based on gamification to change the way primary school education is taught in India.

The first iteration of the platform will be released next month and Nilekani said while it was aimed at resolving India's literacy and numeracy problems, it could easily be rolled out in other developing countries.

In his first visit to New Zealand, Nilekani said what had struck him about the Kiwi companies he'd talked to was they weren't used to dealing with scale because of the country's small population.

"Scale is not something you do after you have built your solutions.

"If you're going to have an impact in India, you have to have scale, and solutions need to be made differently so they're highly automated, low-cost, and developed so they can be used anytime, anywhere," he said.

New Zealand companies tended to be low volume and high cost and it needed to be the other way around to do business in India, a "price-sensitive" market, he said.

Developing scale was a mindset, said Reuben Abraham, chief executive of Indian think tank the IDFC Institute who, with Nilekani, was in Auckland for the India New Zealand Business Council summit.

"If you think small, you will remain small. You have to think big to have a shot," he said.

New Zealand companies should also look to do business at state rather than country level, Abraham said.

"India is not a single market activity and if you try to do that, you'll be in trouble. Governance at city level is broken, so you're stuck with states."

Companies should do their homework on which Indian states would suit best because there were significant differences between the progress and wealth achieved in some over others, he said.