Meeting in Hyderabad - End of week 2
Trip Start
Jun 22, 2006
1
7
11
Trip End
Jul 21, 2006
Hyderabad, India
Friday, July 7, 2006
I have learnt another Hindi (?) word, no is "nay nay"! Seems to come in handy around here! I am also slowly picking up on the food names, or at least the ones I don't like (Dal = lentil mush) and some that I do.
I have spent the last three days in Hyderabad for meetings with the regional CARE team and major mFI partners organizations. We got up super early to make the 5:30am, 2 hour, flight from Delhi to Hyderabad. It is much cooler in Hyderabad, only around 28 degrees, so that was a pleasant surprise when I got off the plane! From what I have seen, this city is much nicer than Delhi. It is smaller, way cleaner, and has beautiful, lush gardens and trees all over the place. It is built in a hilly area, and the rocks they remove from building are piled all over the place, it looks pretty cool. In addition, there is a lot more public infrastructure. There is a beautiful lake with lots of waterfront green space, restaurants & activities. The scenery is much more interesting than the wide, dusty expanse of Delhi!
All day Wednesday & Thursday morning there was a large status meeting with over 30 participants. This was held at a local hotel and was a fascinating experience for me. I got to see how the business really operates and hear, first hand, the experiences of the partners. This will be very helpful in assessing the viability of the business and our investment position.
I also had the chance to travel to a suburban business park to meet an external contact. This was awesome! They are partnered with an environmental organization and reside in their building. It was the first internationally certified "green" building in the world and has since been out done by only two other buildings, both in the US. They gave me a tour of the building and explained the "green" criteria. It includes everything from how the building is built, to the materials used, to the systems in the building and the resource use of its operations. It is totally self-sufficient, using natural methods of electricity generation, lighting, heating, cooling, waste treatment and water usage. It was really interesting.
After three days of meetings, I have a special list of my "business" observations:
1. Timing - As I was warned, timing is not really adhered to here in India. Agendas are purely a matter of decoration.
2. Cell phones - I mentioned this before, but continue to be amazed by their wide use. In this large meeting people didn't turn off their phones, answered them and then carried on conversations in a loud whisper, as though the rest of us couldn't hear them.
3. Side conversations - It is very common to carry on your own conversation during a presentation or meeting. At any given time there seem to be at least three conversations going on in the room.
4. Burping - Not sure if this is a work practice, cultural practice, or if I was just with a good group, but they kept coming all day!
5. Slide presentations - This group wasn't big on actually presenting. They just put up their slides and flipped through them without saying anything! Then they took questions at the end.
6. Numbers - I only just noticed that the commas/spacing in numbers is different. 50,000,000 is written as 5,00,00,000. And they group numbers in five zeros and seven zeros, rather than our thousands and millions.
The food in Hyderabad is quite different from Delhi. I enjoyed a huge feast of traditional dishes at lunch on the first day, unfortunately it didn't sit well and I am still feeling the effects two days later. As a result of that and all my meetings, I didn't get to do any sightseeing. But I did make sure I recovered in time to fit in some shopping! Hyderabad is the pearl & diamond capital of India, so I couldn't miss that! Despite being no where near the water, this has always been the center for the pearl trade. In addition, the Golconda mine is the site where the Hope, Regent, Orloff & Koh-i-Noor diamonds were excavated. The pearls are sooo much cheaper than at home, so it make it even trickier to tell the real outfits from those selling fakes. Every second store is a jewelry store and they are so eager to please, they will make things on the spot for you!
A few other observations:
1. Construction - I love the bamboo poles that they use to support multi-story buildings while in construction! Imagine all the building codes that would break at home! They also seem to do renovations by a side of the building at a time, rather than by floor. The hotel I stayed at in Hyderabad was under construction, but it was all the rooms on the south side, all floors. So on my floor there were all these open doors with huge holes to the outside!
2. The head nod - This is notorious Indian culture. They never nod yes or no, just side to side, which can mean either. Makes getting directions a little tricky! It was super frustrating at the beginning, but now it makes me laugh and I even caught myself doing it yesterday!
3. Police - I have mentioned the traffic chaos a few times, but yesterday I saw a new one. In Hyderabad they have cops in the middle of intersections to help control the traffic. Twice yesterday I saw cops "pull over" someone to reprimand them and in both cases as soon as the cop reached for his note pad, I assume to give a ticket, they took off! The cop yelled, but didn't go after them!
That's it for now. I had a great time in Hyderabad and am looking forward to the weekend on the beach in Goa!
k
