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BENGALURU – a cool, crowded, and flat land

LalBaghI had a great time in Bengaluru (Bangalore) and enjoyed my stay for little over three weeks.  Even though I enjoyed the cool weather and delicious food, I hated the traffic in Bengaluru.  The roads are clogged with all kinds of vehicles and move very slowly.  Bengaluru which was known as “the garden city of India,” has become a “hump” city.  You will see humps (speed breakers) on roads everywhere.  The purpose of these humps is to slow down the traffic.  I noticed a lot of changes in Bengaluru since my last visit in 2008.  More and more people are using mobile phones and for many, life revolves around their mobile phones.  Some of them have more than one phone.  Communication and connectivity at all times seems to be the key to success in this flat land.  I wonder just how flat is this flat land?  Bengaluru, also known as the “silicon valley of India,” is now a home to more than 1,000 IT companies and over 250,000 IT professionals live here.  Bengaluru which was also known as the “pub” city is slowly transforming into “lounge” city with many upscale lounges.  Lots of things have changed in Bengaluru but I still enjoy visiting Bengaluru.

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Mumbai!!!

This morning we said an early goodbye to the Redlands kids and some of the XIME staff before leaving for Mumbai. Our flight was great! The Kingfisher girls are gorgeous! ☺

Mumbai-SWe did and saw so much in Mumbai, but I wish we could’ve stayed longer and explore some of the entertainment business if that was possible! Highlights of the day were walking/driving along the Arabian Sea, visiting the Gateway of India, drinks in the Taj Mahal Hotel, and shopping for a shawl for my mom!

My favorite stop was to a townhouse that used to belong to Ghandi’s friend and former law school colleague. Whenever Gandhi came to Mumbai on any kind of business, he would stay at this house on the second floor, which has been kept as a museum, library, and monument dedicated to him. You can still walk out on the old tiled balcony where he used to address crowds in the street and see where he labored on his own homespun clothing. It was a rush to be literally in the footsteps of such a great man. I’ll never forget it!

Before leaving, we had one final meal and I bought some cigarettes on the street to sneak home for my brother. In the airport, I used my first-class ticket to raid the president’s lounge of all non-perishable snacks to give to our group for the flight home. We shared some drinks and boarded to plane. It all seemed kind of surreal. Fifteen hours later I was home, but I wasn’t ready to go. There are countries you can spend a week in and see it all. What makes India so special is that, even though I’ve had the time of my life over the past few weeks, it would take almost a lifetime to experience everything India has to offer. I’ve promised myself I will be back one day to continue this adventure, whether its for work, school, or just to travel. For now, though, I have class in the morning… Goodnight!

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Study Abroad India

Mysore and Infosys

Today we woke up super early (5 am!!) to leave for Mysore! On the way we all had a lot of fun on the bus, and stopped at The Big Banyon tree! It was the biggest tree I’ve ever seen with roots going into the ground all over the place. We had so much fun feeding bananas to all the monkeys, and there was one with a tiny little baby holding on to its belly! One monkey even stole a banana out of my hand! After this we made another stop at a company that makes giant machines to grind up rocks into gravel! This place was really nice because they opened early just for us to come, and they gave us free hats and roses! After this we went to professor Rama’s sisters house. The breakfast was amazing and their house was beautiful. I can’t believe how much I am in love with Indian food, it really makes me want to move here! We saw an awesome temple here and a bunch of school kids who ran around with Juanita.

INFOSYS Mysore
INFOSYS Leadership Campus, Mysore

After breakfast we visited the Infosys leadership training center which was crazy! It was like its own little city! They had everything you could ever want like restaurants, gyms, movie theatres, tennis courts, shops, and a giant library. It is awesome how hard they work to make the employees feel at home, and they must give them really great job training here as well. During one of the lectures we had at the company, the man told us that at the end of the employees training they have to pass a test, and if they do not pass this test then they do not get hired! I thought this was interesting because they still put a lot of work into making sure all of their employees are qualified at the highest level. This company is definitely the best I have seen on the trip.

After Infosys, we got back on the bus and on the way home we stopped at some crazy place, I’m not even sure what it was. There was a giant dam and we walked over a river on a bridge to see a light/water show that was pretty crazy. We were very rushed by Rama during this and it was hard to keep our group together because we had so many people. On our way out it started raining and we all got soaked! On the way home we made a pit stop at McDonalds and I got a hot fudge sundae, and shared another chicken maharaja mac with Pete that was delicious. It was such a long night and me and Juanita had to pack all of our bags when we got home.

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Study Abroad India

Monkeys and Infosys

MonkeyToday, we left XIME at around 6:30 for the Infosys Institute in Mysore. On the way we stopped at the big banyan tree and got to feed and play with wild monkeys! This was awesome!

Following our monkey stop, we had breakfast at Professor Ramakrishna’s sister’s house. Breakfast was delicious and included more coconut water, sambha, upma… I wish breakfast were like this back home. It was awesome to see Juanita and Scott running around chasing the school children in the neighborhood before their class started!

The Institute was amazing. It was better than any college campus I have ever seen. It included stores, a movie theatre, a resort-style swimming pool and rec center, an Olympic-sized track, and amazing restaurants. I was a bit dejected to learn that Infosys only hires MBAs from the top three US business schools. The rest are mostly engineers from India and other countries. Still the training here is superb… six months of training at Infosys is equivalent to a four year bachelors in computer science. It’s intense. I found myself thinking that maybe one day if I work really hard and save a lot, I’ll be able to send my kids to a school Infosys hires from and they’ll have the opportunity to apply if they want to. This thought alone is a testament to what I feel is to come from India in the future. As Dr. Vijay put it, for years India has experienced a brain drain because its best and brightest couldn’t find any opportunities or satisfaction within the country. In the future, this will happen in the United States, and people will be flocking to India like crazy.

Infosys-Group

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Infosys=DisneyLand

Today we listened to a lecture provided to us by Professor Aswath Shastry on security issues in technology in India. The topic was of interest to many of the students. The lecture was followed by a discussion of I.T and I.P rights from a consultant by the name of Mr. Rangan Mohan.

We visited what I think is comparable to Disney Land, the Bangalore Infosys Corporate Office. April is blogging about this portion of the day but I must touch on the fact that this campus is literally the most beautiful thing I have seen. It was amazing how a workplace could hold so many benefits for its employees while upholding a fantastic name for itself. Infosys is known by the corporate world as one of the most moral companies and the highest of managerial skills.

Due to the change of scheduling for the week we quickly went back to XIME and ate lunch then left immediately to Wipro Corporate Offices. This was a lot of fun. I literally had the best coffee in the world here. I tried to bargain 300 rupees for Pete’s coffee. He eventually gave in, but gave April and I tea instead. We still believe that since the deal was not fully met and the drink was different from the original bargain we should not pay the rupees, Pete however disagrees.  Portions of the agreement have been edited for content.

Later in the evening we had a panel discussion with the students from XIME. Personally, I felt this to be the most beneficial portion of the entire trip. We were able to compare ideals and views of the two cultures. The discussion was to be about how the two countries could benefit each other and what we would expect the next ten years to turn into. Our group decided to do an S.W.O.T analysis (Yes, even though we were not told do…we are kind of nerdy like that). I will give just a few points seeing as how this is a long blog already.

-Strength- The countries are both democratic and are so similar it makes sense. It will benefit both in the long run. If we allow India to manufacture for less the United States can come in with their specialty of sales. Weakness- The infrastructure of India, the loss of particular jobs, terrorism and more. Opportunities- We felt the greatest opportunity was the expansion of both economies. Threats- some of the threats included other countries, India’s location and both countries terrorism. This is only a few examples of each. Our group all went up together when presenting. I announced that if we are supposed to be talking about the countries working together it should start here so we all presenting. Scott and I were in the same group. Every group did very well.

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Evenings in Bangalore

Well after a looong day of 3 lectures and several hours spent at a company called Accenture we were all very happy to get a small break and go by autorickshaw to a mall near by called Forum. The autorickshaw rides are so much fun and scary at the same time because the drivers are going so fast and weaving in and out of all the traffic! When we got to the Forum mall we went to the Pizza Hut because we were all craving some American food! A lot of us had the cheesy bites pizza, I am not sure whether they have this in the US or not right now but it was good! Then a couple of us went down to a place near the pizza hut called the Cookie Man, where we got ice cream with warm cookies crumbled on top mmmm. Then we split up and walked around to do some shopping for a while, and while we were waiting outside we saw a GIANT grasshopper that jumped about 20 feet! After that our trusty driver Mark showed up and we had a very adventerous drive home with him, and now we are all hanging out and typing away on the computers!!!!!!

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Study Abroad India

Visit to Accenture

Prior to our company visit to Accenture August 18th, we attended three lectures at XIME.   The first session focused on managment education in India and featured the president of XIME, Professor J. Phillip.

The business schools in India are some of the largest in the world and graduate more than 160,000 students annually.    Since there are so many schools, there is a lot of competition and demand for high performers.  Most of these schools are located in south India where there is a high literacy rate among women and population growth is less.  What I found most interesting was when Professor Phillip lectured about David McClelland‘s theory that people have three basic drives; achievement, affiliation and power.  A business professionall will likely be less successful if he or she has an improper balance of any of these aspects.

The second lecture focused on cross cultural aspects of doing business in India.  Some interesting subjects that were covered included India’s many red tape heavy government procedures, how many Indians view the castes today, and the how India’s government and businesses got to where they are today.

The final lecture was given by Dr. M. P. Ravindra, an employee of Infosys on sabbatical at XIME for the next year; it covered Information Technology (IT) in India.  His lecture focused on the evolution of IT in India and it’s current challenges to achieving greater success.

Later that afternoon we visited the company Accenture, which is an innovative back-end software provider, emerging technology leader and provider of other customer services such as software development life cycle consulting.  We were able to test out their latest technology related to consumer services.  They also overviewed how they provide some of their accounting services such as accounts payable processing.  I was impressed with their many layers of security assurance and controls for handling their customer’s information.

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Back to School…

Monday morning marked the start of our lecture series at XIME. We all had a great holiday weekend, and The University of Redlands students have now arrived. We began our day with a welcome and introduction session where we had formal introductions and discussions on our expectations for our time at XIME.

Professor Ravindranathan began with a discussion of the Indian economic scene. India’s growth is exponential and second only to China. While they were impacted by the recent financial crisis, not to the extent that the US was. It is projected that if their growth stays between 5 and 10 percent over the next 40 years, they will be 3rd largest in terms of GDP. Their concerns as a nation are obvious – the literacy rate is about 66 percent and of those, many are barely literate. They also have 260 million people who are below the poverty line. Sixty percent of the population is tied to agriculture, yet it makes up less than 20 percent of the GDP. They also have a very difficult regulatory environment. They have hopes for their nation to eliminate poverty by 2015, commercialize agriculture, and create more jobs by attracting more industry.

After a very nice welcome lunch with the faculty, we visited with a tooling company called TaeguTec. Their parent company is based in South Korea, and they came to Bangalore in 2010. They house an impressive facility with the latest technology and innovations. We were given a very thorough tour and had a nice discussion period after on doing business in India. The biggest takeaway from this company visit was that it may not always be easy to do business in India, but it is always possible. There may be some bumps in the road, but you can work through them.

Following our company visit, Professor Iyengar joined us for a lecture on Indian society and culture. Many of the same characteristics stood out in this discussion as did in our morning lecture. He described India as a salad bowl – a culture of people coexisting, but maintaining individuality. We learned that 83 percent of the population is of the Hindu faith, but that it encompasses a diverse range of beliefs. We learned that India is one-third the land area of the US, but 4 times the population. They are the largest democracy in the world and an unlikely one at that. It was expected that India would  disintegrate as a democracy. There are 18 major languages, including Hindi spoken by about 40 percent of the population mostly in the north. English, however, is the linking language and used in business and communications. The professor compared India to an elephant, slow and steady, while China is like a dragon, fast and furious. We  discussed the remnants of the caste system and the patriarchal nature of society. While the traditional values have somewhat changed, Indian society is still very hierarchical in nature. We concluded by discussing women’s role in society and how it has changed. Overall, our lectures were very engaging and interesting.

We ended  our day by attending a cultural show put on by XIME students in our honor. They had singing, dancing, and videos representing Indian culture. It was really very nice, and we stayed to meet some of the students afterwards. It was a great day.

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Flower Show and Paparazzi!

Bangalore - Flower Show

Today was a lot of fun. We went to a flower show and it was absolutely amazing. There were full sculptures made out of floral designs. The group had a lot of fun because everyone kepts asking to take our pictures with them (our 15 minutes of fame).

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First Day in Bangalore

Today was our first day in Bangalore and we had a great breakfast made specially for us!! I especially liked the tiny bananas that they have here! Then we sat in two classes and listened to the Indian student perspectives on business. We got to meet the XIME faculty and listen to them talk about themselves and introduce ourselves to them, and then we had an awesome lunch! The cook here is great!!!

Bangalore

After lunch we went to visit a company called Maini and listened to them give a lecture about what they do and then we got a tour and saw all the golf carts they build and got a little drive in a solar powered one!! We were all very excited to see a really cool red and yellow lizard and a pomegranite, mango and papaya tree!!! When we got pack to the campus we talked with the students here for a while and watched a painting contest they were having with little children, and me and Juanita were invited to color with them so I drew an awesome flower and she made a peace sign hahah.. they all enjoyed watching us color and a man took several pictures of us. Now we are all hanging out in the computer area of dorm and everyone is going to dinner in a little bit yaay!! Tomorrow is Indian Independance day and there should be some interesting festivities to see!!!