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, including 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 the leading inter-cultural communication executive training company in India, New Millennium Consultants (Pvt.) Ltd., 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, Bechtel, Ernst and Young, and The World Bank. For the past several months, the new joint venture has successfully delivered business communication (including Presentation Skills ) 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. This consultancy aims to bridge cultural and communication gaps between Indian and US team members in very high-level collaborative projects. In addition, a senior American executive with the organization is now learning Hindi language with WLBI's General Manager, Kenneth Price.

WLBI has also been 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 between partners working in close relation to one another. One of the Finnish expatriate professionals working in India recently 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 sixteen 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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