Expats set up shop here to beat the blues at home

BANGALORE: James Sullivan, 41, has found salvation in the holy city of Varanasi. Once a master chef, he lost his job twice in one year, first in Chicago in early 2007 after working for 10 years as the hotel trimmed costs, and then in Mumbai, where he was employed by a four-star hotel.

Then, on a visit to Varanasi, he realised that the city didn���t have good restaurants serving continental cuisine and saw an opportunity to set up one that would cater to the large number of foreign visitors that throng India���s religious capital all year round.

When many of his friends in the US were losing jobs or money during the recession, ���Bread of Life��� became in reality what it meant. It was helping Sullivan earn a good living during tough economic times and make plans for the future.



Starting with a couple of lakhs of rupees and three waiters two years ago, Sullivan now has 20 employees and is planning to expand to Delhi and Lucknow with a Rs 50-lakh investment. He recently bought an apartment, is sending his daughter to school and plans to make India his home.

Sullivan is among the hundreds of expats who have found that the severe economic crisis in rich nations can be turned into an opportunity in India. Compared to the US or Europe, where there are products and services in every segment, even niches, India is a big market, with few or no players, that remains untapped in many ways.

���When you fall on hard times, you tend to prove you are tougher than others,��� says John Howard, who makes solar-powered LED lights for sale in rural India. After he graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2006, he worked for a while but always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And rural India was a big market for solar-powered LED lamps.

���When I came here, I found rural India, especially in northern India, has severe power cuts. I knew solar-powered LED lights could be a solution. He trudged through remote villages in UP, using an interpreter, and managed to find distributors.

Since November 2008, he launched his business with investments by angel investors in the US.

���India is now the new land of opportunity and thousands of expats are making a beeline to Indian cities to nurture their dream of setting up their business," says Neill Brownstein, owner of Footprint Ventures, which funds startups by expats as well as Indians.

A majority of the estimated 50,000 expat workers in India live in Bangalore and many of them are employed with multinational tech firms. A few enterprising ones, however, have set up their own small businesses.

Emma Trinidad came to India���s tech capital in the middle of the recession to find herself a job after the US firm which used to source cosmetics from her decided to cut production. A resident of the Philippines, she eventually launched a spa, S2, about a year ago and is already the talk of the town. ���While the world saw a slump in spending, surprisingly Bangaloreans continued to spend on luxury,��� she says.

With the economy now showing signs of an upswing, Trinidad is already planning to expand to other cities like Mumbai and Delhi. Across town, Italian master chef Paolo Nonino, a co-owner of Via Milano, one of the most popular and highest rated Italian restaurants in Bangalore, is also planning to go national. So is Chris Baker, a British national, who started a recommendation-based directory service to smoothen relocation into the city for citizens from his country of origin.

But it���s not all a bed of roses for them. Red tapism in getting permits to start a new business is the biggest headache. And a recent government decision requiring foreigners working on business visas to have them converted to employment visas has caught many off guard.

���A uniform policy, and more openness would be good instead of such sudden actions,��� says Alexander Moore, MD, LJ Hooker. Chef Nonino worked for a quarter of a century with popular restaurants in his native Italy before deciding to come down to Bangalore and start what is probably the city���s best Italian restaurant.

���If this had not started off, I would have been jobless,��� says Nonino. He recently started a second restaurant and plans to add a couple more this year.

Even the world of arts has seen its share of expats finding their place under the Indian sun. When Christopher Langford lost his job with a dance troupe due to a leg injury a year ago, he chose to remain in Mumbai, where he had come with his group for a show. He decided to give dance lessons for educational institutions and makes enough today to send his kids to an international school. His clients include top theatre groups and even aspiring Bollywood actors.

Sociologist KK Mishra, who has taught at the Banaras Hindu University and Bangalore University, says the story of expat entrepreneurs in India is a dream that only the US once promised. ���You can achieve the American Dream here, give your kids a decent education and live a good life.���