For those who have read the Brad Sugars story, he represents the American Dream. He set up his first business at age 15 and launched ActionCoach in 1997. Today, ActionCoach has offices in 32 countries. The company has now expanded into India.
India has a long heritage of the mentor-mentee relationship and even before the advent of a formal coaching structure, the lives of many Indians were inspired (some might even say governed) by their ‘gurus’ or coaches/guides.
In addition, a signifcant large part of the modern economy is based on entrepreneur, small and large. So it’s no surprise that Sanjay Chaturvedi, one such entrepreneur, has decided to make good use of the long-standing coach-student relationship Indians understand. As the past vice president of Birlasoft, Mr. Chaturvedi has seen the huge potential in merging newly emerging businesses with active coaching. He has acquired the franchise of ActionCoach in India and plans to develop and grow the business by focusing on small to mid sized companies.
Business coaching is not new to India and coaches like Rahul Jain, founder of Business Coaching India have trained executives in a wide range of industries. Targeting smaller sized businesses however may be the way to go. While the Harvard Business Review put the annual spending on executive coaching in the United States at $1 billion, in 2004, he number for India is much smaller today, but growing fast.
