Day 10 - That's a Big Stasche!

Today was a long day! 3 meetings and the Golkanda Fort to visit as well! The day started out with a meeting at ITC on the success story of the e-choupal system. It was amazing to see how big corporates have actually gone into the rural areas and tried to make lives better for inhabitants who were previously being fleeced because of their inability to access the markets in the big cities. Explaining the e-choupal system succinctly would not be doing it justice by a long shot, so I encourage anyone who's reading this to look up e-choupal on google or attend Sudhir Nair's class when he teaches the HBS case in the BCom program at UVic.





We arrived a little early at ITC's office but we found ways of entertaining ourselves not the least of which involved a bunch of us taking photographs with this very sporting gentlement who was... sporting... (My vocabulary is letting me down at this point).... one of the most interesting moustaches we've seen (It takes more than a Movember to get there let me tell you!)



Our next meetings were at IIIT (Indian Institute for Information Technology) where they've set up an incubation center for budding entrepreneurs who've got a technology based solution and are starting up their own services and at Progress Software.

The evening's plan was to see Golkanda Fort which has a lot of history attached to it. The sound system was an engineering feat in those times, as the architecture of the fort supported the travelling of sound clearly for distances up to 500 feet! (As the tour guide kept reminding us, "there were no telephones that time sir".. I didn't want to disappoint him by telling him we already knew that... I thought it may drive a wrench into his awesomely rehearsed routine!)





There was also a sound and light show which further spoke about the history of the various rulers of this fort which a couple of us found interesting (however, most of us couldn't handle the mosquitoes... can you blame them?... I'm talking about the mosquitoes here).








Coolest picture ever! Those lights, in the center of the picture if you zoom in, are eyes! This is a batcave! (No sign of Batman though)

It was also really interesting to note that there were no walls in between the buildings that would act as partitions between rooms. It was all based on the parda (NOT PRADA... PARDA... it's hindi for curtain... spell check needs to get that) system and these curtains would act as partitions and also kept it cool allowing the breeze to blow in (India's a hot place remember!)