Day 11 - That's a wrap!

This is it! Our last day together, one meeting with Basix and we were done! The gang left for Sudhir's palace (oh it's not a typo... I meant to say palace and not place! Just look at these photos! It's like dining with the Sultan of Hyderabad!) where we were treated to Biryani from Paradise (one of the oldest and pioneering places for authentic hyderabadi biryani) along with some beers!

And we had some time to recover our strength for the evening. Usually, at the end of the IIME, the faculty throws a dinner for the students and we toast to a wonderful trip!




The culmination of two weeks' rigorous efforts of travelling in the streets of India (a demanding activity in itself!), preparations for external meetings, internal strategy meetings and so on (and by so on, I mean the.. let's say "extra curricular" stuff outside of official working hours?) deserves royal treatment (we are in the city of Nizams!) So we ended up having the last supper (poor choice of words, I know!) at the other palace (remember, Sudhir's palace is still number 1!)... the Taj Falaknuma!





Built over a century ago, this palace oozes class and royalty! It was the most wonderful experience of walking through something that you feel is straight out of a bollywood movie! Elaborate and exquisite halls, intricate paintings and patronage of the arts, glitz and glamour this place had it all!

As you can see from the photos around, this palace exuded European architecture more than traditional Indian palaces

The view of the city from the Taj Falaknuma!







So that's it from us! It's been fun writing this blog on our travels! (although in all honesty I fell way behind on our trip in Hyderabad so I'm actually writing this from my tiny little dorm room in Victoria!).

I keep telling everyone that this IIME experience has been life changing (yep.. those exact words!) from meeting people who left massive paying jobs in big banks to work for small microfinancing companies like Arun on Day 1, to Anoop who's running Naandi foundation which he calls a "social-for-profit" was just the most enlightening experience that I've had! We all think that India's behind the times, because all we see is movies like slumdog millionaire that show us what we already think we know about a country so that it's believable and an easier sell... I've been guilty of thinking in the same way and I'll be the first one to admit it! But you really need to visit the country and see how people are doing in established businesses, start-ups and social enterprises (essentially the entire gamut of businesses) to get a sense of how advanced the country really is (if not, certainly some of the cities and we're definitely headed in the right direction!)

One of the biggest takeaways for me during this trip was the meetings with these NGO's, social for profits etc. These foundations/companies/individuals are actually trying to make a difference, with a focus on the economic bottom line, by attempting to create business models that tap in to the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. It makes you put into perspective how really ahead of his time CK Prahlad was when he must have come out wih his book!

Every generation defines itself by the effort they put in that leads to a certain event, that B-HAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). You had those that were at the heart of the industrial revolution, those whose sole focus was to put a man on the moon.... the way I saw our generation in India, it seems that our goal is to get help to those that need it, alleviate poverty and ensure that people have a fighting chance! Whether its the e-choupals that end up lifting the floor price for farmers that were being fleeced in the rural markets, or the Grameen Koota's that provide financing when banks turn away or the Naandi's and Basix's of the world, we have to realize that it pays to strive towards having a moral focus at the core of our values. Let's hope that our generation can go out there and address what countless others before us have failed to even acknowledge - The fortune indeed may be at the bottom of the pyramid!
 





Ikram Shaik

Maria Chen

Samarth Mod

Arpita Biswas

Gurleen Randhawa

Sal Toosi

Savinay Chaturvedi

Sudhir Thakur

Tingting Wan

Rachit Khare

Lucy Deng

Essan Parto

Lauren Peterson

Ravina Dhillon 

Wade Danis

Wade,

You and Sudhir have been the most amazing profs on this trip and helped us when we needed it, guided us and I hope we weren't too much of a nuisance!

BIG THANK YOU FROM US ALL!