Indian biggies hunt for foreign talent

Mumbai: There's a new breed of frequent flyers - retail honchos scouting international markets for talent.

Reliance is looking for senior managers in countries like Japan and Indonesia.

Shoppers Stop, in the past two years has hired five foreigners in senior positions and is looking in Dubai, Singapore and Europe for more.

New kid on the block - Hyercity - has an Englishman as CEO. That’s partly because India is fast running out of manpower.

The home supply is enough to fill two of every five senior retail positions.

It's also because "Our talent today is also becoming very expensive. Sometimes it is more cost effective to get talent from overseas. Moreover, people from overseas want to come to India where all the excitement is," says Anita Ramachandran of Cerebrus Consultants.

It's a new industry that needs experienced talent and so has been poaching from sectors like consumer goods and telecom.

Reliance has even picked up people from Mcdonald’s and Raymond. But even now there are some skill sets available only internationally such as supply chain management, visual merchandising and store planning.

Kishore Biyani, the Chairman of Future Group says, "Yes, people with domain knowledge are less but there is no shortage of leaders."

Looks like Kishore Biyani anticipated this shortage seven years ago when he tied up with two management schools to recruit freshers.

Now Pantaloon has allied with MBA institutes across the country to create retail-MBA programmes. That has helped it source 480 students this year, who will hopefully become the managers of tomorrow.

But tomorrow is a long way off - the retail boom needs resources today. And while the front end needs Indian faces, the back end needs global expertise.

For that retail majors just have to shop abroad.