My Guest Appearance at an Indian College

I had the privilege Friday night to speak to the MBA Program at the KV Institute of Management and Information Studies in Combaitore, India.   I was a guest speaker as part of their International Business Expert Series, and my subject was "From Small Business to Global Business in a Small Town."     I did the presentation over live video using ooVoo software, which is similar to Skype. 

There was a full classroom (pictured above) and the students were very attentive and very engaged.  Coimbaitore is a city of 1.5 Million people, so I started by trying to explain just how small South Carolina is and how small Wagener is.   I then spent time talking about two of my customers, Busbee Truck Parts and Tyler Brothers, as well as my own home-based business, Broadstreet Consulting. 

When talking about Busbee's, I told how they started selling truck parts on eBay before I built their ProStores store and eventually ported them to Drupal.  When I asked how many of the students had ever purchased something online, I was surprised that NONE raised their hand.  This points to a great opportunity for online businesses in India.  There are over a BILLION people there and a great number, even young people, have not yet made an online purchase.   I talked about how Busbee's is now selling parts all over the world using the Internet.

I also talked about  how Tyler Brothers has used their Facebook Page to expand their reach among existing and new customers, extending their personal relationship to the online environment.   I then proceeded to talk about Broadstreet and how we have collaborated with eNova Technologies to provide reasonably priced Drupal development services for U.S. clients. 

After my presentation, we opened the floor to questions and the group had many excellent questions.  We discussed Internet business strategies for another 45 minutes.   Many thanks to Kumar Gounder and his great staff at KVIMIS for a great experience.