(PUC-RIO) India’s Leading Export: CEOs

²What on earth did the Banga brothers’ mother feed them for breakfast? ³Whatever it was, it worked: Vindi Banga grew up to become a top executive at the food and personal-care giant Unilever, then a partner at the private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. His younger brother Ajay, ⁴after heading Citigroup’s Asian operations, was last year named CEO of MasterCard – all without a degree from a Western business school and without abandoning his Sikh turban. When Ajay took over at the credit-card company’s suburban – New York City headquarters, the Times of India crowed that he was the first “entirely India-minted executive” at a multinational’s helm.

The brothers laugh when asked for their mother’s breakfast menu, deflecting suggestions that they were raised by a Bengal-tiger mom. Instead, they cite an itinerant childhood as a key ingredient in their success. The sons of a lieutenant general in the Indian army, they moved to a new posting every couple of years – ⁵perfect training, it turns out, for global executives facing new markets and uncertain conditions. “You had to adapt to new friends, new places,” recalls Vindi. ¹“You had to create your ecosystem wherever you went.”

What factors account for the rise and rise of India-trained business minds? “Our colleagues in our Asian offices are asking the same question,” laughs Jill Ader, head of CEO succession at the executivesearch firm Egon Zehnder International. ⁷“Their clients in China and Southeast Asia are saying, ‘How come it’s the Indians getting all the top jobs?’” It could be because today’s generation of Indian managers grew up in a country that provided them with the experience so critical for today’s global boss. ⁶Multiculturalism? Check. Complex competitive environment? Check. Resource-constrained developing economy? You got that right. ⁸And they grew up speaking English, the global business language.

For multinationals, it makes good sense to have leaders experienced in working with expanding Asian markets. ⁹And India is already the location of many of their operations. “India and China are also the countries of future profits for the multinationals, so they may want their global leaders to come out of them”, says Anshuman Das, a co-founder of CareerNet, a Bangalore executive-search company.

Competitive and complex, India has evolved from a poorly run, centrally controlled economy into the perfect petri dish in which to grow a 21^st century CEO. “The Indians are the friendly and familiar faces of Asia,” says Ader. “They think in English, they’re used to multinationals in their country, they’re very adaptive, and they’re supremely confident.” The subcontinent has been global for centuries, having endured, and absorbed, waves of foreign colonizers, from the Mughals to the British. Practiced traders and migrants, Indians have impressive transnational networks. “The earth is full of Indians,” wrote Salman Rushdie. “We get everywhere.” Unlike, say, a Swede or a German, an Indian executive is raised in a multiethnic, multifaith, multilingual society, one nearly as diverse as the modern global marketplace.

¹⁰Unlike Americans, they’re well versed in negotiating India’s byzantine bureaucracy, a key skill to have in emerging markets. And unlike the Chinese, they can handle the messiness of a litigious democracy. “In China, you want something done, you talk to a bureaucrat and a politician – it gets done,” observes Ajay. “In India, if you talk to a bureaucrat or a politician, there are going to be 600 other people with their own points of view.” There’s an old saw about Asian business cultures: “The Chinese roll out the red carpet; Indians roll out the red tape.”

Maybe that’s why Indian managers are good at managing it. ¹²They have cut their teeth in a country ranked 134^th by the World Bank for ease of doing business. To be fair, it’s also the reason some of them left home.

India’s economic liberalization, which began in 1991, was another blessing for this generation of executives. ¹¹It gave them exposure to a young and fast-growing consumer market. “Liberalization unleashed a level of competition that makes you stand on your toes,” recalls Vindi. “We had to learn to compete with international players but also with very good, extremely fast local ones.” In 1987, the company’s leading detergent, Surf, faced off against Nirma, a locally produced brand. “It didn’t cost 5% less, or 10% less,” says Vindi, shaking his head. “It cost a third of our product. We had to make a product that was better, for the same price.” Within 12 months, they had.

By Carla Power

Adapted from Time Magazine – August 01, 2011. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2084441,00.html. Retrieved on August 5, 2011. 

Check the CORRECT statement concerning reference

Um recipiente em forma de cone circular reto, com raio da base R e altura h, está completamente cheio com água e óleo. Sabe-se que a superfície de contato entre os líquidos está inicialmente na metade da altura do cone. O recipiente dispõe de uma torneira que permite escoar os líquidos de seu interior, conforme indicado na figura. Se essa torneira for aberta, exatamente até o instante em que toda água e nenhum óleo escoar, a altura do nível do óleo, medida a partir do vértice será

Palavras jogadas fora

Quando criança, convivia no interior de São Paulo com o curioso verbo pinchar e ainda o ouço por lá esporadicamente. O sentido da palavra é o de "jogar fora" (pincha fora essa porcaria) ou "mandar embora" (pincha esse fulano daqui). Teria sido uma das muitas palavras que ouvi menos na capital do estado e, por conseguinte, deixei de usar. Quando indago às pessoas se conhecem esse verbo, comumente escuto respostas como “minha avó fala isso". Aparentemente, para muitos falantes, esse verbo é algo do passado, que deixará de existir tão logo essa geração antiga morrer. As palavras são, em sua grande maioria, resultados de uma tradição: elas já estavam lá antes de nascermos. "Tradição", etimologicamente, é o ato de entregar, de passar adiante, de transmitir (sobretudo valores culturais). O rompimento da tradição de uma palavra equivale à sua extinção. A gramática normativa muitas vezes colabora criando preconceitos, mas o fator mais forte que motiva os falantes a extinguirem uma palavra é associar a palavra, influenciados direta ou indiretamente pela visão normativa, a um grupo que julga não ser o seu. O pinchar, associado ao ambiente rural, onde há pouca escolaridade e refinamento citadito, está fadado à extinção?

É louvável que nos preocupemos com a extinção de ararinhas-azuis ou dos micos-leão-dourados, mas a extinção de uma palavra não promove nenhuma comoção, como não nos comovemos com a extinção de insetos, a não ser dos extraordinariamente belos. Pelo contrário, muitas vezes a extinção das palavras é incentivada.

VIARO, M. E. Língua Portuguesa, n. 77, mar. 2012 (adaptado).

A discussão empreendida sobre o (des)uso do verbo "pinchar" nos traz uma reflexão sobre a linguagem e seus usos, a partir da qual compreende-se que:

A função  deve ser reescrita como produto de uma constante pelas funções seno e cosseno, calculadas no mesmo valor x, como

O valor de m é:

(MACKENZIE) 

O esquema, acima, mostra como ocorre a manutenção osmótica em duas espécies de peixes. A esse respeito, considere as seguintes afirmativas.

I. No peixe A a eliminação de sais pelas brânquias ocorre de forma passiva.

II. A ingestão de água no peixe A repõe a água perdida por osmose.

III. O peixe B elimina amônia como principal excreta nitrogenado.

IV. No peixe B, tanto a absorção de sais como a de água ocorrem de forma ativa.

Estão corretas apenas as afirmativas