Titled “India and the U.S: Growing Market Opportunities”, this year’s symposium jointly organized by GT CIBER, USIBRC, MACOC, USDOC and GIACC looked to the unbridled growth and change that India has experienced over the last decade. The conference brought experts from government, business, and academia, names within their respective fields and also appeared to have drawn an attendance of over 100 current and future professionals all interested in learning about India’s growth sectors, its industries, its cultural challenges and its success stories.

The symposium’s format was primarily panel discussions with opening and closing key note addresses with breakfast, lunch and refreshment breaks. While majority of the programming focused on big business, there were some aspects of the symposium overall that were relevant to small businesses, especially that survived and flourished decades of doing business with Indian partners and markets, a unique perspective that shed light on non-IT industries such as manufacturing and real estate.

Giving a more government perspective, the Honorable Anil Sharan, Counsellor, Indian Embassy, Washington, DC, in his opening keynote spoke to the need for India to focus on what he termed “the four Ds,” that make India such a strong emerging economy: democracy, diversity, demography and development.

Possibly the most relevant panel of the day was on growth sectors, which featured Erol Yesin, Office of S. Asia Operations, US Deptt. Of Commerce, Rick Hubler, Director of MACOC and Teri Simmons, Partner and Director, International Immigration of AGG as the panelists and moderated by Dr. Jag Sheth, Professor of Marketing of Goizueta Business School, Emory University, who opined that manufacturing and healthcare management will make a big way in India.

The conference also had panels on topics most relevant to “How business is done” standpoint. Comments from Lalit Dhingra, President, NIIT Technologies, a panelist on Indian industries panel, were intriguing as he shared how an India based corporation successfully entered the U.S. market taking advantage of opportunities presented by Globalization. Sanjoy Malik, Chairman and Founder of Air2Web highlighted how a start up firm based out of Atlanta learnt their way to successfully tap into the Indian market (not from an outsourcing operations angle but by actually entering and competing locally). Brian Leary, Vice President of Belton Industries brought a completely different perspective on the real estate market and how the rising costs in real estate has a ripple effect on other industries.

Another dimension of doing business in India was to understand the culture. The last panel on cultural challenges featured Andrew Sherwood, Asia/Pacific Manager for Micromeritics Instrument corp and Rita Wuebbeler, President of Interglobe Cross-Cultural Business Services as the panelists and moderated by Thomas Strauss, USEAC Network Director of U.S. Commercial Service.

The closing keynote speaker, Raymond E. Vickery Jr., SVP, StoneBridge International and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce, US Department of Commerce, presented a very crisp and comprehensive business, economic and political outlook on the past, present and future of India. His comments included well rounded perspectives on the current issues and growth opportunities in the Indian market. He also highlighted what it takes for the two largest democracies, U.S. and India, to continue to foster and create economic and trade relationships between the two nations.

All in all, the conference was a well run, well attended success for the organizers.