As my first international business trip to India in 2007 approached, I methodically prepared for both how to do business well in India, and importantly, how to avoid getting sick on business travel to India, the second most populated country in the world.
I’m excited to share I published my India Business Travel Guide – an insider’s guide, packed with business travel tips and tricks, that reveals the secrets of how to not get sick when traveling to India on business.
Plan Ahead & Don’t Get Sick on India Business Travel
While India was positioned as an epicenter for tech, and was such an intriguing place to me, nearly every person I came across who had traveled to India on business had gotten sick, many to the point they avoided ever returning.
The stakes, as an American traveling to India for the first time, seemed high to me.
The basis for much of a safe and successful first business trip to India was a set of guidelines shared with me by a friend and former colleague at IBM, Prathap Dendi. Prathap not only seeded me with an initial set of tips, namely related to food and hygiene, he joined me a day or two after I first arrived in Mumbai (BOM) for business meetings with business partners and systems integrators.
Having had the opportunity to return to India multiple times, both international in and out trips as well as extensive domestic travel across the business hubs of Bangalore / Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, New Delhi, and Mumbai, I’ve built up a more extensive personal understanding of doing business in India and staying safe and healthy while there.
In 2015, I shared a first cut at an India travel guide with colleagues who were traveling to India for the first time. That first edition was a simple Word document, and had some notion of headings and sections. I joined that trip in 2015, and everyone returned back to the US without getting sick.
I refined the travel guide quite extensively over the years, especially after I personally got sick, quite violently ill actually, in 2014 – in Delhi no less, the infamous Delhi Belly!
The essence of my refined approach was put to the true test in a 2015 return trip in which I did not get sick, and so I’m really happy to share the updated India Business Travel Guide here on Your Entrepreneur Inside.
Moving the travel guide online will make it more easily accessible, and that much easier to update with what I anticipate will be incremental revisions from colleagues and friends as the guide has truly been a collaboration in due diligence starting with Prathap’s initial input back in 2007.
International Business Travel Is Fascinating to Me
I have a sincere appreciation for the blessing and honor it is to see the world through international business travel.
To gain insight and understanding of how business is done in foreign countries, to intentionally insert myself into situations where you have the chance to see first-hand the subtle nuances of culture, it’s eye-opening, humbling, and makes me better.
I’m a much more effective businessman, both at home and abroad, and able to add more value and be more effective, because of the reps and experience I’ve had via international business travel.
Whether that’s knowing the subtle methods of how to get a deal done in a foreign country, to being an effective international public speaker, giving presentations in foreign countries, with and without interpreters, truly being understood by your audience because you’ve been given the opportunity to study the art of international public speaking, international business travel is a launchpad for all of it.
It would be an honor if you checked out the Guide, and, shared your feedback with me in an effort to continue to refine the content and make it better.