First update from India

Namaste from India!

Where to begin? I will not bore you with the details of the 24hr journey just to get here! Rather, I will skip to the first day. From Delhi we woke up at 230am on first day to go to Agra to see The Taj Mahal. This was not as painful as it sounds due to the jetlag and 12.5 hour time difference most people were up at this early hour. It is about a 4.5 hour bus ride to Agra with no traffic and 5.5 hours with traffic. We also left early because it gets so hot in Agra (around 35 degrees Celsius) that is is best to reach the Taj before it gets too hot. It's hard to describe the Taj in the sense that most of you have already seen pictures of it. The difference is in person it is even more beautiful. The marble is of the finest quality and there are so many precious gems that it looks different all times of the day because of how the sun reflects on the building. After the Taj we grabbed a nice buffet dinner at a local Agra hotel and also went to a marble workshop. I was not planning on purchasing anything but i walked away with a little marble elephant with a variety of precious gems within it. That evening I was so exhausted that I just went for a swim at the hotel pool then had dinner at hotel and passed out.

The next day we had our first company visits. We visited Hewitt BPO first. Hewitt does human resources outsourcing - mainly handles benefits for North American companies. The company is based out of Chicago but have a variety of centers in India. This one was in Gurgaron a suburb of Delhi where most of the international firms are. The people we interacted with at Hewitt were all very well educated and seem to posses strong people skills. None of them viewed infrastructure as an inconvenience which I found interesting. Mainly their point was that the lack of Indian infrastructure does not effect their daily business as they are not reliant on it. Plus they have their own generators and transportation system for employees.

Next visit in the afternoon was Hero Honda. This is a joint venture between the Indian company Hero and Honda. For over 50 years Hero has been making motorcycles and scooters but in the 1980s teamed up with Honda to reap the benefits of japanese technology and processes. So far this appears to have been a success for a variety of reasons. 1) The joint venture is still intact. 2)Hero Honda has the majority of marketshare. They have very little presence outside of India - just in Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Columbia. Their partnership with Honda limits how competitive they can be outside of India. They are only allowed to export 3% of their total production. Other big takeaway after the factory tour - safety is not a big deal here. Compared to China, the factory conditions were horrible. Loud noise and lots of fumes. Barely anyone wore safety equipment...

That evening we went for a walk around a busy shopping street and I worked with Vikas in order to get a SIM card for my phone. This proved to be a very difficult process as the government has cracked down post Mumbai terrorist attacks. not many places sell the SIM cards now and you need to fill out as lot of paperwork. An hour later we finally got it!

Finally a great dinner in the Connaught Place area of Delhi then back to the hotel for some sleep. So far so good.

Later today we go to Mumbai.

Paul