EMBA Students Return from India

11/04/2014 8:46 AM

By Brandon Wallace ‘17

Students in the executive MBA program recently returned from their international trip to India.

The students, accompanied by Dr. Raj Iyer and MBA/EMBA Director Lisa Stufflebeam, traveled to New Delhi and Chennai, India. The students left on Oct. 3 and returned on Oct. 16.

Before the trip, students in the class put together a business plan for the Tirupur Export Association (TEA) to help increase their market share in the United States. As part of the project, the EMBA students made U.S. market entry recommendations to TEA President A. Sakthivel.  The presentation and recommendations were highly praised by Sakthivel and other TEA members.  Local media picked up the story, as well as “Business Standard,” a national Indian publication.

Along with presenting their project, the students were required to spend a day with a business in India. The objective of this project was to understand how the Indian businesses operated and also provided an opportunity to network with their Indian counterparts. The students visited the businesses and worked on business initiatives with their Indian counterparts.

Many of the students were intrigued by the differences between Indian culture and American culture. One student, James Lansberry, kept an interesting daily journal about his experiences.

“The train ride gave us a view into the extreme poverty of huge chunks of India,” Lansberry writes. “We passed more than one village where people lived in conditions that were not as clean as a trash landfill in the United States. The living conditions ranged from tents to brick apartments, but the people there lived in conditions that make the ‘poor’ in the U.S. appear to be rich by comparison.”

“They have excess labor available compared to America,” student Doug Johnson said. “It really changes your mindset on what’s important. If you lose a worker, there’s another worker ready to step in tomorrow.”

Aside from the educational aspect of the trip, the students also did a lot of sightseeing. They visited the Taj Mahal, the India Gate, various religious sites and more.

“The Taj Mahal was the highlight of the trip,” student Ben Schmitt said. “Just seeing and understanding how long it took and how hard it was to build was incredible.”

All of the students raved about the trip, and how great of an experience it was educationally and culturally.

“I gained the most from the experience by going with an open mind,” student Dawn Jeffries said. “I went all in. I came back feeling completely fulfilled.”