MBA program. Post 4/6 (Feb/March 2016 - India)

I arrived in Bangalore straight from Dubai after celebrating my birthday, arriving on Feb 18th. The week was pretty crazy as we had left SF a few days prior with all of our belongings in our suitcases. Also from Dubai I was racing to finish my grad school pre-assignments and get our first 2 hires in Argentina up and running.

I was there one full day early and skipped the opportunity to hang out with a small group of guys as they toured around Bangalore due to being tired, having some work to get done, but also a recurring theme, not totally feeling confident in myself and ready to be super social in a group setting.

The good thing was that as my business was starting to come together, my overall sense of confidence was coming out and I felt less weighed down by the HR anvil I had been carrying around, which just didn't seem very respected amongst the crew.

2 guys I became close with during the program: Greg (Brisbane, AUS) & Nags (Singapore)

Here is me doing a midpoint presentation about Rockwell Collins and air freight cargo systems. It was as boring as it sounds!

The segment structure was interesting, 1 week in Bangalore followed by a travel day to Delhi, an additional day to visit the Taj Mahal, and then class would run in Delhi for the final 5 days.

In Bangalore we had one of my favorite classes of the entire program "Negotiations" and it turned out that I was pretty good at it, especially the one on one versions. The large group one got a little contentious as I wasn't fully comfortable with my speech impediment. In the small group though, I had a blind salary negotiation with the other HR guy in the class, Anto and I totally blew him away. Later when we shared stories with the class, they were in awe of how I approached it. It was a nice moment for me and built some confidence around my knowledge and the value I can bring.

India is one of the few countries I have zero desire to visit again. I was overwhelmed by the pollution, the poverty, the smell, the lack of hygiene, clean water, and the food just seemed totally inedible for me. I had stomach issues from some of the food and couldn't keep things down for a few days. All of this coupled with a ambigouos business environment, high corruption, and questionable business law, made for a less than idea place for me.

Some people love Indian food. I was not one of them.

One of the highlights was having Christie join me for the Delhi segment and having her waiting for me during the day so I could spend time with her and have some sense of home and comfort between classes.

In Delhi I had a very relevant class, which was hard for me and pushed me pretty good - Strategy. Prof Sing was a sikh and wore a turban, and he was tough on us, pushing me to do better and to dig a little deeper.

Professor Singh - teaching Strategy

The Taj Mahal was certainly a beautiful landmark and very impressive. A wonderful story, but you also see the terrible poverty along the way.

From L-R at Taj Mahal: Kaz (Japan), James (Singapore), Anto (Indonesia), Christian Indonesia), Ben (Singapore)

We also did a tour of the Coke a Cola offices in Delhi and heard a commercial real estate CEO speak. He mentioned that there is a 10/20/70 breakout of the Indian population. 10% earn the same of the top places in the world and would be execs anywhere. These people choose to live here and see the opportunity. The bottom 20% experiences some of the worst poverty known to man. The middle 70% is the focus for most of the companies and the opportunity to rise their standards of living and hence forth, the country as a whole. I love opportunity and there is a huge opportunity in India, but a place I would never choose to live or do business in.

India was a place I had some good times with the class and was starting to pick up more confidence as the Argentina opportunity was now in full swing. The business was alive and we are starting to build something. I really enjoyed the opportunity to share the progress with the class. Aside from speaking business, I still felt a bit left out as there were a few cliques forming and I wasn't sure exactly where I fit. I was kind of like a chameleon, but only close with a few guys. Being sick and not wanting to eat the food didn't help with this!

While in Delhi, Sarthak - my classmate and Delhi native took us to "Kingdom of Dreams" which to me, defined India. It was loud, fun, and never boring... filled with song, dance, lights, musical numbers, and dance routines, as it described the history of India.

While In Bangalore we toured the HQ of Infosys, which does what Nearshore systems does, but at a tremendously large scale, around 180,000 employees! Their HQ looked like an oasis in the dessert, a beautiful tech campus similar to Google in Mountain View. I learned that Infosys had to invest a lot in public-private partnerships even for the roads to get to campus. Inside the campus it was beautiful. Outside was the opposite.

As usual, despite the fascinating topics, it didn't keep everyone's attention!

Sarthak was from Delhi, but even he couldn't keep his eyes open!