Interviews
The interviews in the Creating Emerging Markets archive form a permanent and unique resource held in Harvard Business School’s Baker Library. Many interview transcripts can be downloaded immediately in full, and all others are available upon request. Each interview page includes supporting resources about the interviewee and her or his business. If the interview is conducted in a local language, an English translation is provided. Many of the interviews are on video. Harvard ID holders are able to access the full-length videos through the website. Most Latin American interview transcripts are in Spanish and English. La mayoría de las transcripciones de las entrevistas latinoamericanas se encuentran disponibles en español e inglés.
Interviews are freely available for research & teaching. For academic research, we ask that you credit HBS using the citations provided on the transcripts. For more information, visit our Research Guidelines page.
We welcome feedback and suggestions for ways to improve the project.
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Results
- Ghana
Kwasi Abeasi
CEO, Africa Investconsult Ltd.
(Financial Services)
“You have to negotiate. And you have to go with a team that knows how to negotiate. Otherwise you’ll get a deal that looks good. Later on you find out it’s no good.”
- Bangladesh
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed
Founder and Chair, BRAC
(Microfinance, Development)
“I’ve never thought that you can do good only through nonprofit activities. You can do good also by doing business.”
- Pakistan
Seema Aziz
Founder, CARE Foundation; Managing Director, Sefam
(Education and Retail)
“I understood that an education [is] the only gift which no flood can take away, which becomes a part of a person and changes lives like nothing else can.”
- Pakistan
Syed Babar Ali
Founder, Lahore University of Management Sciences
(Education; Government)
“I felt, having been in industry and business for a fair amount of time, that you could so much with management, but not enough unless you added value to what the country is producing.”
- Mexico
Alberto Baillères
CEO, Grupo Bal
(Diversified)
“One of the cornerstones of the group’s competitiveness, in comparison to our international competition, is our emphasis on human relations. We try very hard to be a family”
- India
Sanjay Bansal
Former Chairman & Managing Director, Darjeeling Organic Tea Estates Pvt. Ltd.
(Tea, agribusiness)
“My general approach towards the workers and their family was that we were all part of one family. So I think that was a major act of breaking down the formal relationship of the previous [colonial] structure.”
- India
Ela Bhatt
Founder and Former General Secretary, Self-Employed Women's Association
(Microfinance)
“I say that poverty is violence, and with the consent of the society... I would say that the basic needs and problems of the poor will not be solved by the government, any government. They will have to be solved by the people themselves.”
- Argentina
Jorge Born
Former President, Bunge y Born (now Bunge Limited)
(Agribusiness, Food)
“You need to stay incredibly nimble to anticipate what the government will do, and governments often have no plan of any kind”
- Colombia
Carlos Enrique Cavelier
Chairman of the Board and Dreams Coordinator, Alquería
(Dairy)
“I’ve never thought one should use power to benefit a business: power should be used to serve society. I believe that, by building a reputation as a business leader and as a company, one can contribute technical expertise to enhance public policies for an industry – but not for personal gain.”
- Colombia
Antonio Celia
CEO, Promigas
(Natural Resources)
“At Promigas Foundation, we work to improve public education quality, and we have reached one million children in 17 years. Our motto is 'Education is Everything.' It is inclusion, equity, social mobility. Education frees people and enables them to do what they value.”
- India
Madhav Chavan & Rukmini Banerji
Co-Founder and President (Madhav Chavan); Chief Executive Officer (Rukmini Banerji),
Pratham Education Foundation
Pratham Education Foundation
(Education)
“The important point was to solve the problem. You don’t know where you’re going to end up, but you’ve got to make an entry.”
- India
Shamlu Dudeja
Director, Malika's Kantha Collection & Trading Pvt. Ltd.; Chairperson, SHE Foundation and Calcutta Foundation.
(Textiles, education)
“The people who can look at the distress of another person and put their hand out to help, they are the people of God.”
- Colombia
Henry Eder Caicedo
Chairman of the Board, Inversiones Manuelita
(Agribusiness)
“Working at a public organization has taught me how to deal with public powers – you have to get along with them. If one is a businessman, one also has to get along with politicians and understand what matters to them and how they think.”
- Lebanon
Melek El Nimer
Founder, Social Support Society & Unite Lebanon Youth Project (ULYP);
(NGO, Education)
“When you do not allow people to have a decent income, they get stuck in a refugee camp, and there is no way they can improve their circumstances. In my opinion, the only way out of a refugee camp is education.”
- Brazil
André Esteves
Former CEO, BTG Pactual
(Financial Services)
“You always need luck, right? But it’s important that when luck appears you are there working, right? If you are at home, you probably cannot benefit from the opportunities.”
- Mexico
Dionisio Garza Medina
Former President and CEO, Alfa S.A.B. de C.V.
(Diversified)
“We focused on modernizing, on reducing costs, because if you sell a commodity you have to have the best costs, because if your product does not differentiate itself from others, then who wins the market?”
- United Arab Emirates
Fadi Ghandour
Founder and Former CEO, Aramex
(Shipping & Logistics)
“I understood the power of entrepreneurs, and I understood the power of how we affect society—positively or negatively. Because Aramex was a positive story, I understood how positively it affected youth, young people who wanted to become entrepreneurs.”
- Colombia
Pedro Edgar Gómez Barrero
Founder, Pedro Gómez & Co. and Co-Founder, Fundación Compartir
(Construction; Real Estate; Education)
“I would tell young people that good quality training proves instrumental, but a value-based education is even more crucial. What do I mean? I mean that it is more important to learn how to behave ethically.”
- United Arab Emirates
Mohammad Omar Bin Haider
Founder and Chairman, Mohammad Omar Bin Haider Holding Group (MOBH Holding Group)
(Logistics; Real Estate; Hospitality; Diversified)
“I want people to remember me, that I made something.”
- India
Anil Jain
Vice Chairman and CEO, Jain Irrigation Systems Limited
(Agribusiness)
“These small farmers, globally, wherever they may be—if you can provide them with the right products and solutions, it is great for them and also great for you—your own growth, your profitability, your sustainability.”