Sunday 17 April 2011

Pune and the road to Mumbai

A colleague and I flew down to Pune (formerly Poona) on Wednesday morning with Kingfisher Airlines. Kingfisher is owned by Vijay Mallya, an Indian version of Richard Branson. Mallya's father built the business on the ubiquitous Kingfisher beer and Vijay has expanded it to acquire "UB" (United Breweries).  Vijay plays hard and owns the Force India F1 team as well as IPL side Bangalore Royal Challengers.


Pune is a relatively small airport but an international one nonetheless, and from there it was straight to the offices of our largest supplier who are based in the Hinjawadi business district to the west of the city. Pune has a long established manufacturing base and a large graduate population which is what fuels the software development industry in the Hinjawadi. All of the Indian tech firms are here and most of the world's multi-national corporations have work done here, as in a number of similar sites across India, most notably Electronic City in Bangalore. In Hinjawadi, like other tech parks, the buildings are often architecturally challenging as companies vie for one-upmanship, like the "snake's egg" building below that belongs to Infosys.




Visiting suppliers in India can be culturally awkward for us. On arrival you are typically greeted at the door by your hosts and a small ceremony is performed in the reception. Your forehead anointed with a Bindi (red spot) and a large garland of flowers is placed over your head. You are often asked, as I was, to light a candle at that point. The symbolism here is that the burning wick represents the gaining of knowledge and the shrinking candle the loss of ego that goes with the learning. That always impresses me - we could use a lot more of that. It usually ends there but I have heard some horrendous stories from colleagues; my boss was once asked when running through the meeting agenda if he would say a few words to a larger staff audience at the end of his visit. "No problem" was his response and he promptly forgot about it. At the end of the session, the party escorted him out of the office and up a flight of stairs onto the roof of the building. There he was ushered to the balcony where  there was a podium with a microphone. Down below were 5000 employees assembled to hear him "um" and "er" his way through an impromptu speech. Nightmare!


We left for Mumbai at 4.30 pm and hit the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. This is a six lane motorway (three each way) that snakes the 60 miles down from the Deccan plateau to the coast. This was first experience of highway driving over any distance in India and it was fine. Lane discipline is the only challenge as there is none, but I think I would have been happy enough to have done the driving. It's much tougher in the cities where it's a cut-you-up and push-in free-for-all, all the time honking your horn to let everyone else know you are there.


The countryside was relatively green (for India) and dotted with decent looking homes. We went through a number of long tunnels cut through the hillsides and within 90 minutes were on the outskirts of Mumbai. Just another two and half hours battling through traffic and we reached the Westin hotel. I have stayed in Westin's before in the US and Singpaore, but this one knocked those into a cocked hat. The reception was on the ground floor but the hotel didn't actually start until the 18th floor and I was on the 30th. the picture below is from my floor looking down on the bar on the 18th floor!


The room was very modern and had absolutely everything you could possibly need. We were running late and did a quick change before heading out to meet our man in Mumbai. Dinner was in a trendy restaurant over-looking the sea. The whole place was painted scarlet and we had a prime sea-view seat under several enormous palm trees. The other diners were mostly in their 20's and 30's and well-heeled. The food was a tapas-style Indian and everything I had was delicious. Bed by 1am and asleep in 20 seconds!

3 comments:

  1. Really enjoyed reading this, thanks a lot.

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  2. Me too Dave, thank you. Certainly India is far more western than it is given credit for.

    As for hotels, India had two of the top 5 in a recent Travel & Leisure poll of the world's best hotels. India also took 9 of the top 20 Best Asian hotels.

    I do fancy an India trip.

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  3. Kap/CA - Thanks. My jet-setting has slowed enormously since my kids arrived on the scene, so I need to make the most of every opportunity!

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