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
- Kuwait
Kutayba Alghanim
Chairman, Alghanim Industries
(Diversified)
“Being able to be flexible is good, because conditions in the marketplace change—continuously. You have to keep up with those conditions.”
- Chile
Roberto Angelini Rossi
Chair, Empresas Copec S.A. and AntarChile S.A.
(Petroleum, Forestry, and Fishing)
“Businessmen are never allowed to say ‘I’m done.’ We can never sit down to see what happens. There is constant evolution ... we must provide orientation to our companies and keep on expanding and innovating.”
- 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.”
- India
Shabana Azmi
Actress
(Cinema)
“Art can lead to a climate in which sensitivity allows change to occur, and with it inherently comes social responsibility.”
- India
Rahul Bajaj
Chair, Bajaj Group
(Diversified)
“We were in a socialist raj. You couldn’t make anything until you got an industrial license and you couldn’t make more than the license capacity.”
- Argentina
Susana Balbo
Owner and Chief Winemaker, Susana Balbo Wines
(Wine)
“I had to find a way to produce modern wines with little resources. It’s amazing how resourceful we can be when we need to: we are not aware of the tools we have until we start using them.”
- 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.”
- Peru
Rosario Bazán
Co-Founder and General Manager, Danper Trujillo S.A.C.
(Canning, Agriculture)
“I take pride in the relationship among company workers and the fact that everyone—no matter what his or her job is—feels as important as a manager, in terms of his or her contribution to our organization.”
- Turkey
Cem Boyner
President, Boyner Holding
(Retail)
“Retailing is probably the world’s second oldest profession. You have so many people that come into your store who you touch... our salespeople are psychologists... clairvoyants... They can read character. So we just gave the authority to them.”
- Argentina
Federico Braun
President and Chair, Sociedad Anónima Importadora y Exportadora de la Patagonia (SAIEP) (La Anónima)
(Supermarkets)
“La Anónima is seen as a company that meets its commitments, has longtime and loyal employees—and this is important—and keeps its word. However simple they may seem, these qualities are not that easy to find.”
- India
Anand Burman
Chairman, Dabur India Limited
(Natural Consumer Products)
“We want our brand—we want the Dabur name—to signify trust.”
- 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
Dr. Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti
Chair, Nalli Silk Sarees
(Textiles, retail)
“King George IV visited India... In the honor of his visit, the committee in Madras City... wanted to present one Kancheepuram saree or one cloth... They gave that order to my grandfather, because he was very particular about quality.”
- Peru
Felipe Antonio Custer
CEO, Corporacion Custer
(Food and Chemicals)
“Most business leaders I know take themselves too seriously. You can do business very seriously, but you should never become too detached from your own humanity, who you are as an individual.”
- South Africa
Hubert Danso
CEO and Vice Chair, Africa Investor
(Financial Services, Media)
“[O]nly 12–15 percent of all of our trade is actually intra-African. So there’s a huge opportunity there, and a need, to build that out.””
- 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?”
- Brazil
Jorge Gerdau
Chairman, Gerdau Advisory Council; former CEO, Grupo Gerdau
(Steel)
“[A]side from my management vision in the steel industry, the public sector, I also give my attention to issues of social responsibility. In a country like Brazil, no leader can avoid worrying about social development.”
- 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.”
- Argentina
Alberto Grimoldi
Grimoldi, S.A.
(Clothing, Shoes, Retail)
“It is instrumental to get the population at large to believe that future is going to be better than the present.”
- India
Dr. Yusuf Hamied
CEO, Cipla
(Pharmaceuticals)
“In America, the price [of AIDS drugs] is $24,000 per patient per year. You know at what price I am giving it to Africa? $96 per patient per year.”