In India, 101 Employees Pose Big Problems

摘要

Surrounded by humming sewing machines and gossiping women, Nazia Begum stitches a gauzy black frill onto a C-cup brassiere in a factory in Muzaffarpur, about three hours south of New Delhi. Her employer, Shekhar Bhagwat, matches the bra to a photograph to check the quality, then watches as the lingerie gets packed and sent off to a Paris boutique. Although Bhagwat is prospering, he faces a dilemma. The next logical move is to branch out into men's underwear, yet margins are smaller in the men's line and a company requires big economies of scale to succeed. "Men's underwear?" asks Bhagwat. "Why bother with the headache? I'd need thousands of employees." Ramping up does not appeal to businessmen like Bhagwat. As soon as a company hires more than 100 employees, it is impossible to fire anyone without government permission.