Still no elephants, but lots of roadside cows

Yep, you guessed it, I'm now in India. I’ve now completed by 26 hour journey to get here and my first day of presentations.

The journey itself was long via Paris, Dubai and then on to Bangalore, but it passed off without any major incidents. During the journey I renewed my love for McDonalds - not because of their food but because of their free wifi at CDG airport. I also took my first ever flight on the super jumbo from Airbus - the new A380. In reality the only time you really know you're on such a large plane is when you are boarding – one because you can see it through the window, and secondly because there are multiple streams of passengers boarding different parts of the plane in parallel. Once aboard it is very similar to many of the other larger types of planes. Whereas I had assumed there would be a swimming pool and running track in the cabin and that it would be some sort of Titanic like experience, in reality it was a normal flight seated next to a normal arguing married couple and in front of a normal screaming baby. Despite what I had heard about Emirates and its cabin crew, the food was very normal and the air hostess even managed to spill a bottle of water over me. Thankfully I was dressed in shorts and flip flops (I really was expecting a swimming pool) so there was no real issue. The one very positive plus point was the entertainment system with over 200 movies and multiple episodes of my favourite TV programme Glee!

The airports at Dubai and Bangalore were quite different. I was at Dubai at around 1AM In the morning and it was a hive of activity and bustling shoppers. I arrived at Bangalore smack bang in the middle of rush hour at 9AM. Despite the first thing I saw in India being a huge bill board advertisement for Accenture (!), the things which I remember most were the fact that it took me under 2 minutes to get through passport control and the quietness of the whole airport apart from a squeaky conveyer belt that delivered our luggage. After 10 years with Accenture I was used to Homeland Security in Chicago, but here in Bangalore it was as if they couldn’t wait to rush me into the country. Whilst I was determined to arrive without any preconceptions about what it was going to be like, the journey itself had already destroyed a number of myths in my mind. I also have to confess I was somewhat reassured to see that the floors in the airport were marble as opposed to mud, and I also was quite relieved to see my suitcase turn up after only an hour of waiting.

The final leg of the journey, a 2.5 hour taxi ride through rush hour Bangalore, was probably the most interesting part of the journey despite my exhaustion. I have never seen anything like it. I struggled to find any parallels and if I were forced to make any comparisons I would have to say it felt like a mix of the outskirts of Budapest in Hungary, the worst parts of Slovakia or Romania, and Morocco. The poverty and randomness of the place is quite clear to see, but there are clearly pockets of wealth and affluence and the place is not complete chaos as I was led to believe it would be. The cows were particularly well behaved and most seemed to be staying on the side of the road rather than actually being in the midst of the traffic. The other journey that was particularly interesting was the 45 minute morning run from the hotel to the Wipro campus on the Tuesday morning. We left our extremely plush hotel at around 7.30AM before crossing through shanty towns on the way to our corporate campus. Seeing hundreds of people (mainly men) just milling around with seemingly nothing to do and more of these sacred cows scavenging in piles of rubbish is something of an eye opener and a far cry from my regular commute in the lavish, moneyed streets of Zurich. When I left Accenture I wanted to see how the other half live and how things are done in the emerging markets. At least I can’t say I have been shielded from that experience.

We were privileged yesterday to have many of the company’s top brass come and talk to us in a series of lectures. Our results are being announced at the end of the week so they are all in India for that. Overall I felt the quality of the speakers and the material was mixed. Rather unsurprisingly the most impressive in my opinion was the head of sales. Whilst I heard a lot of the right messages and I felt people were saying more or less the right thing, and reassuringly they were saying the same things as my direct boss back in Europe, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that reading between the lines and understanding what wasn’t said is going to be especially important here in Wipro.

We’re back in the bus going through the shanty towns for the second day of lectures. I suspect PowerPoint fatigue is going to set in quite quickly, but for the minute it’s been an interesting trip. The other participants are also very interesting – it seems that Wipro is currently following a policy of hiring older, more experienced people to try and improve gravitas in front of the clients, especially in developed markets. As a result people aren’t shy in coming forward and asking difficult questions – for example it was the first time I have ever heard an American complain about his 10 days of statutory leave, the Wipro working culture, and his desire to take things a bit easier at his age (he was turning 30 next week). More anon no doubt over the coming days.