LINGO LEVERAGE: A class taking place at the Inlingua International School of Languages; (below) students at the NordicTalks language school

Prashant Joshi has hit upon a corporate formula that never fails. “Whenever I go for a client meeting, I always introduce myself in Japanese,” says the business development and sales executive at Sony India’s Bangalore office.

It makes an instant impression on his clients — most of whom are Japanese nationals — claims Joshi. “I establish an instant connect. Many have told me they feel relieved that I speak their language,” says Joshi, who has been learning the language at Bangalore’s Japanese Language School for the last three years.

Joshi admits it’s not been a cake-walk learning a language that has three scripts, over 2,500 characters and no cultural link with any Indian language. “But it makes huge business sense. My clients feel comfortable talking to me and the discussions are smoother,” he says.

Like Joshi, the number of people learning to say sayonara is swelling in Bangalore. When the Japanese Language School started in 1984, its students were a handful of translators and linguists, recalls director Shyamala Ganesh. “Today, 80 per cent of our students are corporate executives,” claims Ganesh.

Yet it’s not just Japanese that is catching the fancy of young Indians. Language schools teaching Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish are flourishing in Bangalore.

Economics is driving the demand to learn new languages, believes Kris Lakshmikanth, chairman, Headhunters India, a Bangalore-based recruitment agency. “The US and Britain are no longer the main markets for India’s information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries,” he says. Growing business contact with non-English speaking markets has pushed up the demand for learning new languages, he adds.

As Helsinki and Yokohama become the new work centres for Indian IT firms, foreign language schools are doing brisk business. “Language courses have come into demand because of the IT sector. These companies place a lot of employees abroad, and they need to communicate with their clients and colleagues in the local language,” says Savitha Reddy, director, Inlingua International School of Languages, which started in Bangalore in 2005. The institute — which teaches French, German and Spanish — gets more than 100 students every month. “The numbers have been increasing by 35 per cent every year,” claims Reddy. Each course has six levels, and each level costs Rs 7,000.

When Hrishika Nandy, a Bangalore-based IT executive, was deputed to a project in a bank in Sweden, she received a circular from her office, asking her to bone up on Swedish. “I was required to learn basic conversational Swedish and also about the culture of the country” says Nandy, who enrolled for a crash course at NordicTalks, a school that provides language and cultural training for four Nordic languages.

Christina Melathil, director, NordicTalks, says the institute offers a combination of language and cultural learning because it works best for corporate employees. “The communication and contact between professionals of two countries is smoother if you understand the culture, mindset and language of the other,” she says. The school, which started in Bangalore in August last year, has students from the hospitality, healthcare and IT sectors, the director says.

To be sure, some students learn Spanish and Finnish for the love of the language. But the bulk of the business comes from corporate training programmes. “The language schools sector is seeing growth because companies are increasingly providing training to employees,” says Laura Benito, director, Instituto Hispania, a Spanish language school that started in Bangalore in 2002. The institute has held language programmes in over 30 companies, including Accenture, American Express bank, Tech Mahindra and Wipro, claims the director.

With growing Indo-Swedish business contacts, the less-than-a-year-old NordicTalks language school is already making plans to expand to other major metros in India. “There are close to 160 Swedish companies doing business in India. Also, a lot of Indian companies are working in Sweden. We expect Swedish to be in demand,” says Melathil.

In fact, corporate programmes have replaced classroom learning at some of the city’s language schools. A Japanese language learning school, Gobunsho, for instance, focuses completely on corporate training. “We provide language training and translation and interpretation services for companies only. This is a booming business area,” says Srivatsa, founder director of the school, which started in 2008. He adds that the institute has trained over 250 employees in companies, including Mercedes-Benz, Sharp Software and Hewlett-Packard.

Language courses are also being tweaked to suit professional needs. To cater to its corporate clients, Instituto Hispania has incorporated handy workplace requirements in its course curriculum. “One of the objectives of our course is to enable students to have telephonic conversations, read signboards and short texts and send emails in Spanish,” says Benito.

When Geometric Ltd, a Bangalore-based IT firm, bagged projects in Germany, France and Japan two years ago, the first thing it did was rope in the services of a language school. “About seven per cent of our employees are trained in foreign languages,” says Sunil Subramaniam, manager, human resources, Geometric.

Greeting a German client with a Guten Tag — instead of a hello — clearly goes a long way. “It’s easier to interact with a client if you speak their language. It also makes the customer happy,” says Subramaniam. Multi-lingual employees also save companies the cost of a translator. “The cost of hiring a translator for each project meeting and client call is much higher than training employees in a new language,” adds the HR manager.

Again, learning a foreign language is not just a sound business proposition. As young, urban Indians turn travel savvy — and mark places other than Bangkok and Disneyland on their holiday itinerary — they feel the need to have a working knowledge of new languages. “International tourism is booming in India and young people are increasingly taking to off-beat travelling. This has added to the demand for learning new languages — both for professionals in the travel industry as well as customers,” says Headhunters’ Lakshmikanth.The one thing that Nidhi Mishra remembered from the school history lessons was Peru’s Inca civilisation. “It was on my must-visit list,” says the 23-year Bangalore-based postgraduate student. Mishra leaves for Latin America next month. To prepare for the trip, she enrolled for a crash course in Spanish at a local foreign language school. “I was advised to get a working knowledge of the language,” she says. Mishra also plans to backpack across China, Tibet and East Europe in the future. “In these countries, it’s best to be familiar with the local language,” she says.

An old joke goes that a man on death row was asked what his last wish was. He said he wanted to learn Chinese — that would postpone his visit to the gallows forever. That joke, clearly, doesn’t hold good any longer.