First Overseas Office of World Learning for Business
Opens in India
In an exciting step toward increasing the global reach of World Learning for Business, the organization recently launched it first overseas office in New Delhi, India. Located at Gurgaon, the fast-growing suburb of international repute just outside the nation's capital, the new training and consulting operation has already built up an impressive client list. This roster includes companies such as American Express, Nokia, Microsoft, Gap International and Hughes Software Systems (an independent subsidiary of Hughes Network Systems, USA). As the list reflects, the need for advanced-level intercultural communication and language training among multinationals is rapidly growing throughout the Indian Subcontinent.

The March 2003 acquisition of New Millennium Consultants (Pvt.) Ltd., India's leading intercultural communication executive training company, has brought to World Learning for Business a locally established name and core set of clients that include such notable companies as Intel, Avaya, Dupont, Ernst and Young, and The World Bank. The new joint venture has successfully delivered business communication programs, along with both standardized and highly customized cultural communication workshops (for regions including North America, Northern Europe and Japan) to Indian executives and professionals in major Indian companies.

Among new activities, World Learning for Business India (WLBI) has taken up a long-term consulting and training project with the India operation of a major American travel and financial services company, also headquartered in Gurgaon, India. The mission of this consultancy is to bridge cultural and communication gaps between Indian and US team members in very high-level collaborative projects. Training has already begun in India, and will soon be initiated also in the U.S. for American professionals engaged in India-related projects, bringing to bear World Learning for Business' unique approach of bi-lateral intervention, i.e. working with both sides, in a global relationship.

WLBI was recently awarded a consulting contract by a Finnish telecommunications company to research and train the Indian and Finnish professional staff about cross-cultural communication issues that arise between partners working in close relation to one another. One of the Finnish expatriate professionals working in India remarked, "Our approach to the work has changed in a very big way since we began working with World Learning. Their contribution to our project has been very significant, and we look forward to working with them as we move ahead here in India".

Kenneth Price is the General Manager (Asia Region) and a Principal Trainer/Consultant for World Learning's new undertaking in India. A social anthropologist with more than 16 years experience working and researching in South Asia, Ken speaks fluent Hindi and French, with a functional knowledge of Urdu and Marathi as well. Combining his passion for languages and cultures with several years of sales, marketing, and distribution experience in US companies (including more than two years with HJ Heinz), Ken brings a fresh and provocative perspective to the utility of intercultural theory when addressing business communication issues in the South Asian context.

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