When Not in Rome, Don't Do as the Romans Do

A CandyD Italian in Emerging Markets

"Two suitcases and the telephone numbers of two friends of friends: this was what I was carrying when I landed in India on October 22, 1998. What an irony in the fact that just a few years earlier, while boarding a plane from New Delhi to Rome, I had promised to myself not to go back to India, at least not until my retirement age."

But as fate would have it, Stefano Pelle eventually returns to post-liberalized India as an expatriate working for the Perfetti Van Melle Group and what starts from there is a journey through emerging markets.

At the heart of Stefano's psyche and his management beliefs are innumerable situations when a one-sided biased perspective would have led to failure in business deals or problems in personal life; more so being an Italian married to an Indian wife, currently settled in the Middle East and with responsibility over a geographical area extending from Bangladesh to Senegal. Overall, the story wrought here is one of hard work, ambition, and success.