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.”
- India
Anu Aga
Thermax Private, Ltd.
(Engineering Manufacturing)
“[As a leader], you don’t have to know everything In fact, one of the beliefs I have is [that] skills can be hired. The leader has to show wisdom—that cannot be hired.”
- Sri Lanka
Abbas Akbarally
Chairman, Akbar Brothers
(Tea; Diversified)
“The main thing is integrity, honesty; and once the banks know that you are not going to take their money and go to the casino, they will give you the money.”
- 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.”
- Turkey
Gülsüm Azeri
Group President, Şişecam; CEO, OMV Petrol Ofisi
(Chemicals and glass; Petroleum)
“Being an engineer always helped me. I went for R&D. If there wasn’t sufficient R&D, I formed it...”
- 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.”
- 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.”
- Nigeria
Hakeem Belo-Osagie
Chair, United Bank for Africa (currently with Etisalat Nigeria)
(Financial services)
“The biggest challenge in Africa is that you constantly have to manage the government and the regulatory agencies. They play a far more pervasive role in Africa than they do in the United States.”
- India
Shyam Benegal
Filmmaker
(Cinema)
“I have always felt that the Indian countryside was never really represented properly on the Indian screen But if you really wanted to understand the Indian psyche, you needed to look at rural India.”
- 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.”
- 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
Dr. Subhash Chandra
Chairman, Essel Group
(Media, Entertainment)
“Don’t be overjoyed when you meet success, great success; don’t be depressed or feel sad if you meet failure [this has] helped me...in my life and particularly [in business], I learned that the downturn teaches you much more than the success.”
- Malaysia
Mavath R. Chandran
Advisor to The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and Honorary Member
(Agribusiness)
“So it’s grown—[the] RSPO—and overall, I must say, it has proven to be a success. I think we have created a demand for sustainable palm oil.”
- 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.”