Bismarck Lepe, co-founder of Ooyala and one of Silicon Valley’s more improbable success stories, addressed his audience in Spanish, explaining why his startup is opening an operation in Guadalajara, the city that might be considered the valley’s Mexican outpost, starting with eight employees.

For this delegation of 65 prosperous Mexican executives on a five-day pilgrimage to Silicon Valley, including visits to the likes of Apple, Google, Tesla Motors and Stanford University, the visit to Ooyala’s Mountain View headquarters on Wednesday struck a cultural chord.

Eighteen months — not a short time in the Internet business — have passed since I first wrote about Bismarck and Belsasar Lepe. They are the overachieving sons of migrant Mexican farmworkers who attended Stanford and worked at Google before partnering with fellow Stanford/Google alum Sean Knapp to launch their Internet video infrastructure startup in 2007. Silicon Valley may think of itself as a meritocratic melting pot, but tech entrepreneurs from the Latino laboring class are rare.

When I heard that the executives — on a trip organized by IPADE, Mexico’s leading business school — were visiting Ooyala, I figured it was a chance to catch up on the company and the Lepe brothers.

So far, so good: Ooyala has become a leader in its video platform niche, battling rival startup

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Brightcove. Guadalajara adds to a global profile that already includes offices in New York, Los Angeles and London, with others planned for Tokyo and Sydney. Its work force has roughly tripled over the past 18 months and is expected to reach 100 employees by the end of the year.

Ooyala now helps 600 customers operate 5,000 websites and do business in more than 100 countries

After the exceptional economic growth and prosperity witnessed by emerging markets, like China, India and Brazil, the CIVETS, Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa are expected to be the growth leaders in the next decade.  

As a whole, the CIVETS have appeal due to their large, young and growing populations, diversified economies, decent financial systems and political stability, when compared to their counterparties.  Additionally, the Economist states that all six nations are relatively unhampered by high inflation, trade imbalances or sovereign debt woes. 

On an individual basis, Colombia is rich in natural resources, in particularly oil, coal and gold, all commodities that are likely to see increased demand in the near future.  Additionally, international investment has already started to make its way to the Latin American nation and consumer spending has started to elevate.  

After Brazil and Mexico, Colombia is the 3rd largest recipient of Indian FDI

John Briscoe, professor of the practice of environmental health at Harvard School of Public Health, has spent 35 years in the World Bank studying water-related disputes around the world. He points out that large agricultural areas and most cities in the subcontinent depend heavily on groundwater, which is going down at an alarming rate. In India, the affected areas such as Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are critical for food production.

Pakistan faces similar daunting problems. The Indus is likely to be much more seriously affected by climate change than any other river system in South Asia. Briscoe is convinced that unless there are major reforms in the way it is managed, water is likely to become a major constraint for economic growth and human wellbeing.

Indian policy makers acknowledge that the situation is grim. India is already below the water stress level, which requires availability of 1,700 cubic metres of water per person. Water resources secretary U.N. Panjiar says, “after best efforts to improve water use efficiency are undertaken, India is projected to have just 1,100 cubic metres per capita  by 2050,”

The relative strength that Latin America has shown as it recovers from the global financial crisis underscores the increased importance of trade with China and India, as well as strong fiscal policies implemented in the region, said a panel of experts Tuesday.

While the U.S. and Europe have struggled to recover, Latin America is booming, with Brazil expected to grow over 7%, Peru forecast to expand 6.6% and Chile anticipated to increase at least 5% for the year.

In recent years, as most of Latin America has expanded trade with India and China, it has taken advantage of two of the strongest economic engines on the globe and it has broken with the old paradigm of south to north dependence, said Alfonso Prat-Gay, former president of Argentina’s central bank.

That translates into reduced dependence on trade with the U.S. and Europe and moves toward breaking the traditional dependence of the “South” on the “North.”

“It’s become less relevant for Latin America that the developed nations are in crisis,” said Prat-Gay.

In Chile, which has the most diversified portfolio for its exports in the region, 23.2% of its exports go to China, 13.2% go to developing Asia, which includes India, 16.4% stay within Latin America, 18% go to the European Union, and 11.3% go to the U.S.

Meanwhile, the region, once characterized by bouts of hyperinflation and bulging public debts, is also seeing sustained growth on the back of strong fiscal policies, which have by and large reigned in those problems, Chilean Finance Minister Felipe Larrain said.

Some outsourcing jobs are becoming as cheap to fill in the US as they are in India, according to the head of the country’s largest business process outsourcing company.

More FT video

High unemployment levels have driven down wages for some low-skilled outsourcing services in some parts of the US, particularly among the Hispanic population.

At the same time, wages in India’s outsourcing sector have risen by 10 per cent this year and senior outsourcing managers based in the country command salaries above global averages.

Pramod Bhasin, the chief executive of Genpact, said his company expected to treble its workforce in the US over the next two years, from about 1,500 employees now.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

China proves tough for India’s outsourcers – Aug-17

Opinion: US needs to make bad jobs better – Jul-05

Video: Call centre closures hit Italy’s south – Aug-06

Firstsource lauds US reforms – May-05

Asia to reverse IT outsource trend – Feb-14

India’s IT outsourcers poised for pick-up – Feb-04

“We need to be very aware [of what’s available] as people [in the US] are open to working at home and working at lower salaries than they were used to,” said Mr Bhasin. “We can hire some seasoned executives with experience in the US for less money.”

The narrowing of the traditional cost advantage is also spurring other Indian outsourcers to hire more staff outside India.

Truth can be stranger than fiction.

The first meeting of the India-Brazil joint defence committee, with a focus on taking advantage of each other’s defence production capabilities, will be held here on Wednesday.

While the Brazilian delegation will be led by Admiral Gilberto Max Roffe Hirschfeld, the Indian side will be headed by additional secretary R K Mathur. The meeting aims to build upon the existing bilateral defence cooperation agreement to explore co-development and co-production in aeronautics, ship-building and sub-systems such as software, avionics and ordnance.

The meeting comes ahead of the navies of India, Brazil and South Africa hold trilateral IBSAMAR wargames off the African coast next month — the first edition of which was held in May 2008 — to bring together the maritime forces of three dynamic democracies and economies from three continents under one umbrella.

Incidentally, India has been acquiring some aircraft from Brazil, which has a well-developed aeronautical and defence industry, over the years. This includes the procurement of five Embraer 135-BT Legacy executive jets for VVIP travel in a Rs 727-crore contract inked in September 2003.

India is also acquiring three Embraer-145 jets for its mini-AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) project, under which indigenous AEW&C systems developed by DRDO will be mounted on the aircraft.

Tata Global Beverages Ltd (TGB) is looking to enter the foods business to tap opportunities arising from the need to “address nutritional and lifestyle challenges”, Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group, told shareholders of the company, formerly Tata Tea Ltd, at its annual general meeting on Monday.

The foods business is competitive and vulnerable to fluctuations in prices of raw materials, but analysts still see it as among the most profitable businesses in the consumer products area.

For an established brand, gross operating margin from foods could be 35-55% though the business demands a lot of investment upfront, said Anand Ramanathan, advisory services manager at audit and consulting firm KPMG.

TGB’s chief executive officer Peter Unsworth said on Monday that his firm’s revenue from beverages should be around $5 billion by 2015, whereas at the 2009 annual general meeting, the company had said it was aiming for revenue of $10 billion in five years, or by 2014.

For the next five years, TGB expects operating profit to grow at 15% year-on-year, Unsworth said, adding that TGB would double its geographical presence to 100 countries over the next few years.

Also on the company’s radar are markets in South America, TGB’s vice-chairman R.K. Krishna Kumar said.

The new ETF will track the bespoke INDXX Infrastructure index, made up of 30 Indian companies with a market value of at least $200m that are expected to benefit from infrastructure spending.

There are other infrastructure ETFs on the market, from providers such as iShares, Deutsche Bank, State Street and Claymore, but these track global infrastructure indices based on stocks with primary listings in developed markets.

The largest industry weighting in the EGShares ETF is electricity (23.3 per cent) followed by construction and materials (16.9 per cent), metals and mining (13.7 per cent) and industrial engineering (12 per cent).

In contrast, ETFs that track the broader Indian equity market are more heavily weighted towards sectors such as oil and gas, IT services and commercial banks.

Mr Kang says underinvestment in infrastructure has been particularly acute in India, which spends just $41 per capita on infrastructure, compared with $92 in Brazil and $408 in China.

However, there are clear signs of change with India’s government planning to spend $514bn on infrastructure as past of its 11th five year plan, which runs from 2007 to 2012. The majority of this spending, 71 per cent, is earmarked for 2010-2012.

There are plans to build five new nuclear power stations, modernise 35 (non-metro) airports, upgrade 22 railway stations and build two dedicated rail freight corridors.

Goldman Sachs estimates India’s infrastructure spending could reach $1,700bn over the next 10 ten years as the country attempts to deal with enormous demographic changes that are expected to see its labour force increase by 110m over the next decade (compared with a rise of 15m in China and a decline of 3m in Japan).

Although India already has 42 cities with a population of more than 1m, only 29 per cent of its population lives in urban areas. Goldman says India is “on the cusp of a massive increase in its urban population”, with an estimated 290m people moving into cities by 2030 and 640m shifting to urban areas by 2050. As a result, the number of cities with populations above 1m could increase four-fold by 2050.

This rapid urbanisation and the enormous scale of India’s “demographic dividend” have significant implications for infrastructure spending.

Goldman describes activity related to roads, power, and ports as “frenetic” and says an aggressive policy of road building should see the pace of construction rising from 10km to 20km a day.

According to the Ministry of Shipping, India’s port capacity could increase from 145m tonnes annually to 326m tonnes over the next few years.