In Mumbai, India, drivers stay just this side of total chaos with a clever horn-honking system. Gary Scholten knows about it. He just can’t figure out how it works.

When the chief information officer for Principal Financial Group Inc. is plunged into the Asian subcontinent – if an 18-hour series of flights can be described as a “plunge” – he enters a culture that’s stunningly different from the one he left behind in downtown Des Moines. In November, Scholten will make that transition for the third time this year.

“You look at the distance to your destination, gauge how long it should take, then quadruple it,” said Scholten, who didn’t get much experience with heavy traffic while growing up in Larchwood. “It’s indescribable. A two-lane road will have five vehicles abreast, including SUVs full of foreigners, motorcycles carrying five people, ox-drawn carts and three-wheel bicycles.”

Principal entered the Indian market in 2000 via a joint venture with Industrial Development Bank of India. In 2003, Principal and Punjab National Bank agreed to form a joint venture to sell mutual funds and related financial services.

Each extension of Principal’s interests adds to Scholten’s responsibilities as the person in charge of technology for the entire corporation.

Scholten has been with Principal since he graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 1980. As CIO, he has visited Chile, Mexico, Hong Kong and Japan on company business.

He has traveled to India six times in the past 2 ½ years, and has noticed changes during that short span. “It’s much more common to see Westerners now,” Scholten said. “You can feel the energy and momentum of the country. The airports are overwhelmed, and most of that is because of Westerners.”

A first-time visitor, however, would still be struck by the throngs of people, the choking traffic and the poverty. A stopped vehicle draws children who knock on the windows and beg. “Next to a modern IT company might be shacks,” Scholten said. “We toured an orphanage on the last trip; a person there described ‘street families,’ and said the goal is to get them out of the streets and into the slums.”

At the same time, there are enough middle-class families among India’s vast population to make financial services a growth industry. Principal’s mutual fund activities are primarily directed at individuals and deal mostly in Indian stocks. The company also works with companies on retirement plans. “The biggest thing for us is the retirement plans,” Scholten said. “They’ve had only government-sponsored retirement plans in the past. I think it’s a great opportunity for us.”

Principal’s mutual fund operations are based in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay and, with suburbs included, the home of 20 million people.

English is the language of business there, so Scholten has little trouble communicating with his colleagues. He does find, however, that they conduct business a little differently there.

“It’s a very negotiation-oriented culture,” he said. “That takes people aback when dealing with it for the first time.” Scholten also has learned not to expect to hear “no.” Instead, he hears “I’ll think about it.”

In India, “business is very relationship-driven, even more so than in the U.S.,” Scholten said, and that’s one good reason for taking a long trip halfway around the world. The return trip, by the way, takes even longer, sometimes lasting 25 hours.

Indians traveling here for Principal business meetings suffer culture shock too, of course. “We have some people over here from India who had never been in the U.S.,” Scholten said. “They went out in downtown Des Moines one Sunday morning and didn’t see any people around. They said it was so eerie, they had to go back inside.”