BUSINESS BAVARIA Issue 01_02 | 2011

Bavaria’s trade fair authorities: faring very well in fast-growing markets

Triple I – “investment”, “innovation” and, especially, “internationalization” – made 2010 a year of record results for the trade fair authorities in Nuremberg and Munich.

 

Especially remarkable is NürnbergMesse’s rise to the Top Ten in Europe and Top 20 worldwide among such fair authorities.

 

This has made the trade fair authority Europe’s fastest growing! Bernd A. Diederichs, its managing director, attributes this five-fold

rise in turnover over the last 13 years to an ambitious and
concerted program of capital investment (more than €150 million
was devoted to the trade fair center and its technical infrastructure over the past five years alone) and event innovation launched in the mid-90s. A key part of this was the creation and adaptation of fairs for markets as Brazil (which accounts for about half of the authority’s turnover outside Germany), India, Russia and China. All told, the authority staged in 2010 twenty trade fairs outside Germany, and organized stands for the country’s public sector at 36 more events.

 

Joining this lineup in 2011 will be ACREX India. To be held on February 24 – 26, 2011 in New Delhi, the fair is striving to establish itself as the number one get-together for the subcontinent’s booming air conditioning and cooling sector.

 

The payoff of this “Triple I” approach was particularly large in 2010, in which the authority, for the first time, recorded a turnover exceeding the €200 million mark – up 30% over that of 2008, the year of comparison (due to the biennial nature of trade fair calendars). In a gratifying move, the authority’s profitability for the year “exploded” in the words of Diederichs.

 

Also at record levels were the numbers of exhibitors (more than 29,000 – of them more than one third non-German) and visitors (nearly 1.5 million – of them more than 200,000 non-German) attending the 157 events staged by the NürnbergMesse Group in Germany and abroad. In Munich: wide range of venues – and of countriesMesse München (MMG) has long been among the world’s top ten. Keeping Munich’s trade fair authority in this elite group has also been its own implementation of the “Triple I” approach. 

 

In 2010, Munich’s trade fair authority set all-time records for exhibitors (37,000) and visitors (more than 2.2 million), while registering a strong rise in turnover (to more than €250 million) and profitability. Behind this successes, achieved on an “ever-more fiercely contested market”, according to Klaus Dittrich, chairman of MMG’s management: “restructuring measures” and “our capability of innovation”.

 

This capability manifests itself in the authority’s creation of venues and events. MMG’s sparklingly modern and capacious Trade Fair Center is joined by the adjacent ICM International Congress Centre Munich and by the northern Munich and smaller-sized M,O,C, (Munich Order Centre – for specialized and emerging events) in providing “right-sized” staging grounds.

 

This ability is also to be seen in the adeptness shown by MMG in going international. Among the more than 40 fairs held and co-organized outside the country by MMG in 2010 were such record-breakers as bauma China (a local adaptation of the Munich-based and number one event for the world’s construction sector) and such promising newcomers as the ENEREXPO renewable energy fair in Hanoi.

 

These assets have also impelled the successes achieved by Messe Augsburg. Augsburg’s trade fair authority stages on its modern fairgrounds such international trade fairs as interlift (elevators), GrindTec (grinding technologies) and RENEXPO (renewable energy), as well as a number of fairs serving the region and its specific needs.

 

The fairground’s halls are also a popular venue for entertainment events.The performance of Bavaria’s economy is one big reason why the trade fairs in Munich, Nuremberg and Augsburg are so popular. It provides them with large numbers of “home” exhibitors and visitors – and ensures that inter-national businesses visit this “can’t be skipped” market.   

 

www.nuernbergmesse.de/en

 

Five minutes with … John Kottayil, Executive Director of the Bavarian State Office in India

John Kottayil is Executive Director of the Bavarian State Office in India from the very beginning. The representative office in Bangalore 2011 celebrates its 10th anniversary. Bilateral economic ties and relations between India and Bavaria have never been better; some of the underlying facts for this John Kottayil conveys as follows.

 

What trends do you see in Indian investment in Bavaria?

 

India’s economic growth this year has been consistently been growing at 8% GDP and is expected to grow at 9.2% by March 2011. The recovery from Global recession has been a smooth transition and today we see a lot of Indian companies back on hiring and expansion. It is interesting to note that apart from large companies going for expansion, a large number of medium sized companies are also looking forward to set up their business operations in Europe. When one thinks of Europe, Germany is certainly top of the list and within Germany, Bavaria is the top location. India’s IT sector is growing in leaps and bounds. Apart from the IT sector, there are many other sectors which are gaining significance like biotech, aerospace, renewable energy and automotive.This ensures that more Indian companies would certainly look out for global presence and I am sure in the coming days, Indo Bavarian relations are certainly going to reach higher notes of cooperation and achievement.

 

What strengths does the Indian business community believe Bavaria to have?

 

Indian companies are enthralled by the pro active investor friendly policies of the Bavarian State and they are happy with the smooth procedures of setting up an office in Bavaria. Thus we are happy to note that in our 10 years of experience we did not have single complaint. The Indian companies appreciate the transparency in the German system and the one stop solution at the representative office in their own country. The assurance of support is of utmost importance to an Indian company and we, at the Bavarian State representative office ensure that each Indian company is treated with special care.

INSIDE THE STATE – For the world and from Bavaria’s SMEs perfection in many ways

Product quality and security of operation …

… that’s what the testing systems created by the Munich-based Vispiron AG deliver. By detecting and reporting on vibration and other physical characteristics, the systems help manufacturers of cars – including, increasingly, E-mobiles - and industrial equipment determine how well subsystems and components are functioning – and where they need improvement.

 

But that is by no means all. Founded in 2002, Vispiron also offers equipment enabling manufacturers to update their test rigs on a remote access basis and electronics logs for commercial vehicles. It also supplies audit programs for photovoltaic facilities.

 

In view of this portfolio, it’s not surprising that Vispiron is also one of Germany’s fastest-growing employers. It is in the process of doubling its workforce from its current 230.

 

The number of awards won by Vispiron and especially its founder, Amir Roughani, is comparable to that of its products and services. “Best Industrial Product of the Year”. “Best Employer in Germany”. “Best Foreign-Born Entrepreneur”. “Career of the Year”.

 

Roughani’s career is in fact well worthy of awards.

 

In 1986, Amir was an eleven year-old refugee from Iran. After learning German, getting a university degree in financial engineering and gaining entry-level positions in Berlin, he came to Munich in 2000, to work for a media company. In 2002, he founded what would become Vispiron. Its first major client: BMW

 

The perfect listening experience …

… a sound quality as good as that of the spectators sitting in the first row of a concert hall. That’s what everyone listening to music would love to have – and that’s pretty much what the headphones produced by the Tutzing-based Ultrasone, founded in 1991, deliver: sound with the requisite three-dimensionality and without static and other disturbances. Behind this near-perfection of listening: 60 patented breakthroughs.

 

The perfect virtual mockups …

… designing a new BMW and Audi used to require building and rebuilding mockups. This ponderous exercise in welding, screwing and scrapping has been replaced by the perfectly real virtual mockups created by the Munich-based Realtime Technology. Once the new car has been manufactured using these mockups, the company is called on to deliver the presentations showcasing them to the world.

BIG STORY – India and Bavaria: partnership for growth

This autumn the “Year of Germany“ in India and the “Year of India“ in Germany will be inaugurated to deepen the relations between the two countries.

Bavaria and India are celebrating now: The 10th Anniversary of the Bavarian Representative Office in Bangalore. Time to have a closer look at the two economics:

 

Investment: Indian companies like TCS, HCL, Dr. Reddy and Wipro have set up manufacturing, service provision and other facilities and offices in Bavaria. Those and other global players have driven the development of India into one of the fastest-growing countries in the world.

 

Siemens, BMW, Allianz and MAN are among the more than 300 Bavarian companies that have invested in India.

 

Trade: Bavarian exports to India for the first three quarters of the year to India grew 15.5% (y/y), coming to nearly €979.2 million. Amounting to €549 million (up 25.7%), imports from India are on a very high level.

Considerable though these figures are, they pale in comparison with what is expected to come, states Anup Mudgal, the Republic of India’s Consul General in Munich. “An era of much closer and more extensive ties” is his prediction.

Mudgal cites two main reasons for his prediction: “familiarity and fit”.

 

Factor 1: Familiarity. Bavarian companies – notably Siemens – have been doing business with India for more than a century and a half.

“As both of our systems are based upon individual business initiative and entrepreneurship and upon the stability ensuing from rule by democracy and law, Bavarian and Indian communities experience a great deal of familiarity and a high level of comfort when doing business in and with each other,” notes Mudgal, who has had a long and distinguished career in India’s diplomatic service.

 

Factor 2: Fit. India is well on its way to becoming one of the world’s five largest economies, predicts Goldman Sachs, provided that it can satisfy its vast needs for infrastructure (and particularly energy supply), innovation and education. As the past few years have amply shown, India has done a commendable job of creating the capacities meeting these needs – often calling upon companies from such places as Bavaria to do so.

 

“These needs are getting successively higher-end and more technical. This represents a tremendous opportunity for Bavaria’s SMEs (small and medium-sized en-terprises), which are famed for being leaders in their niches. For India’s ever-greater number of high-techs, Bavaria, with its strong insistence on performance and quality, is the ideal proving ground for products, services and strategies,” states Mudgal.

 

He sees perhaps the greatest fit as being in the area of technical education. “India has an all-levels need for this education. And, as befitting our size, each of these levels has a huge number of candidates. And Germany, whose universities are among the leaders in the world of technological endeavor, and whose dual system of education is eminently worthy of emulation, is an obvious choice to help us meet this need,” Mudgal concludes.

 

Germany is in fact already doing so. Universities in Bavaria and India have entered into no less than 44 cooperation agreements. The number of Indians studying at Bavaria’s universities now comes to 4,000. Facilitating academic and business ties is the Hof-based Bavarian-Indian Centre for Business and University Cooperation.

 

Students, visiting professors and executives account, in turn, for the lion’s share of the nearly 7,000 Indian expats in Bavaria. Serving them is a community comprised of dedicated portals, social and business associations and clubs. The expats’ presence goes to explain the bewil-deringly large number of Indian restaurants and grocery stores in Munich.

 

How satisfied is the Indian expat community with Bavaria: “As the consul general, I am normally the first to get complaints – and the last one to hear praise,” says Mudgal, with a laugh. “And since there is a noticeable lack of the former, I assume that our Indians are very much at home in Bavaria.”

Bavaria in your briefcase in February

Ten fun and unusual things to do in winter in Bavaria

 

1. Sledding

In a state full of mountains and hills and prone to long snowy winters, there’s nothing unusual of course about sledding in general. Quite the opposite.Unusual about these sledding runs are their challenging routes: long (up to 6.5 kilometers), twisting (up to a dozen or more major turns) and steep (don’t ask – better close your eyes). The consensus choices: Wallberg am Tegernsee (the longest, with a spectacular view of the lakes and the Alps), Pfronten im Allgäu (for daredevils – one thousand meters of plunges), and Nesselwang im Allgäu (better be able to steer).

 

2. Building your own Bavarian igloo

Courses for would-be Inuit are offered in Pfronten and Nesselwang.

 

3. Snow tubing

Take toboggan runs and take away the control provided by toboggans, and you have snow tubing. If turning helplessly down slopes is your idea of fun, go to Bayrischzell or Inzell.

 

4. Air boarding

An air board is air mattress borne by runners. And it’s a very quick way to get down a slope – especially since you lie on your stomach while doing such. Inzell.

 

5. Snow kiting

I feel like I’m flying”. Skiers schussing down mountains know well this feeling – which becomes a reality once you add a kite and a harness to your skiing equipment. Snow kiting courses are offered throughout the Bavarian Forest, which has both the height (up over 1,400 meters) and the broad open spaces to make it the ideal staging ground for this fast-growing sport.

 

6. Ice climbing

Don your crampons, get in your harness, grab your picks and start going vertical on ice. Best place to learn the sport is Pfronten, which boasts a 15-meter tower especially designed for the purpose.

 

7. Skating in moats, canals and lakes

It’s a scene right out of Brueghel: the crowds of skaters, curlers and hockey-players thronging on a clear and cold winter day the ice-clad canal running from Nymphenburg Palace towards downtown Munich. Similar gatherings are to be seen on the state’s other royal waterways and lakes.

 

8., 9. and 10. Biathlon, bobsledding and ski-jumping

Germany excels at all three of these wintertime sports, which are, not surprisingly, highly popular in this country. Places for beginners to get to know these demanding (biathlon is a cross-country race featuring sets of high-precision and rapid-fire shooting) and challenging (actually: scary) sports are Ruhpolding, Nesselwang and Kaltenbrunn (up the road from Garmisch); the Olympic bobsledding run (hold on tight – speeds of up to 120 kms an hour) rising above southeastern Bavaria’s majestic Königsee (Royal Lake); and the hills in Breitenberg-Rastbüchl, Hohenbogen in the Bavarian Forest and Reit im Winkl, Obersdorf or Garmisch.      

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_PM0XybC4c      

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-R7N2xhilo      

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lpIc3IUsfk&feature=related

 

 

 

 

Upcoming trade fairs and events

 

… in Munich

INHORGENTA

February 25 – 28, 2011

International trade fair for jewelry, watches, design, gemstones and technology          www.inhorgenta.com

 

… in Nuremberg

BioFach

February 16 – 19, 2011

World Organic Trade Fair          

www.eltec.info

 

... abroad

Delegation trip to India, headed by Martin Zeil, Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology.

February 13 – 19, 2011

Visited will be Bangalore, Pune and Delhi. Sectors covered include automotive, environmental and in-dustrial engineering, aerospace and construction.

 

For further information:

Sonja Miekley

Bayern International

Tel.: +49 89 660566-203

Fax: +49 89 660566-150

smiekley@bayern-international.de