Everybody showed up on time (an accomplishment of sorts) and we had a real interesting day of meetings. Our fist meeting was with Grameen Financial Services (a microfinancing corporation). To give you context to the story that follows, I'd like to talk a little bit about how Indian kids are brought up (reference is made to Redding's 9 boxes analysis specifically to human capital i.e. how the workforce is nurtured and distributed to channels of economic activity)
The traditional Indian middle class trajectory is as follows - after high school go to engineering college, after engineering college go do your MBA (no work experience required... go figure!) then get hired by a big IT firm or a big Bank and make a lorry load of money (some of the phrases may sound unique to India... try to get the gist of it). Out first meeting with Grameen, where we had the pleasure to meet someone who opposed the traditional expectations of Indian society.
Rapturous Attention!
Arun from Grameen Financial Services came through the typical espoused Indian trajectory (an engineer MBA with experience in Infosys and Barclays). The guy actually had the gall to leave the lorry load of cash that he was being offered in lieu of peanuts on the go just because he believed in the social enterprise! (#respect #integrity #socialinnovation)
The next meeting was at ING Vysya (one of the biggest banks in India) where we met Aniruddha and Vishal. Awesome learning experience, sound advice and an eye opener into how in tune India is (and forward in some respects) with the rest of the world!The meeting with ING Vysya started with traditional Lunch on the Indian festival of Ram Navami (I suggest wikipediaing ram navami instead of asking your local Indian... turns out, they get confused with the various Indian festivals some time)
meeting at the ING Vysya Board Room. Thanks to Annirudha and Vishal for being such excellent hosts!Now... the fun stuff!
Breakfast (Tingting loves the dosa! The other photo's just a flower and not something you'd eat just to be clear)
By this time now, if you haven't already started wondering, I've named this post Kelly's revenge for a reason. If you look at our last post on jet lags, I indicated we all have different ways to deal with the phenomenon. Some of us (*cough*Kelly*cough) have the audacity to sleep 15 hours straight and get up fresh while the rest of us (me) are on 3 hours of sleep! Kelly spent most of yesterday HANGRY (combination of hungry and angry... I don't know if he made this word up or not but it's SOOO RELEVANT!) which is why you wouldn't have seen many photos of Kelly.
Well.... he sure made up for it! Without giving away many details of last night, I'll let the pictures do the talking!
That's Kelly in the middle and then everywhere else
Kelly's new friend #1
Or Maybe just Kelly's new friend #3 (Besides Kelly's human friends, various street dogs were involved in the acquaintance/befriending process)
That's us probably not helping the customers team
I love this. A perfect mixture of business and fun!
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