If you don't like people looking at you, DON'T BE A FREAKING BEAUTY QUEEN

As we were sitting on our plane to fly from Mumbai to Goa for the weekend, I happened to look up from my magazine and noticed a number of relatively tall Indian women (5'4 really isn't that tall in my book, but to each their own) sauntering down the aisle in identical hot pink tank tops and insanely tall high heels. As one of them passed, I noticed that on the back of each shirt it said "Miss Femina India," which is the Indian equivalent of the Miss America pageant. I turned to Sunil and Dipo and told them--"looks like we have all of the Miss India contestants on our flight." All of a sudden, all of the guys in group started staring at these girls. It was hilarious to watch 20-odd MBA students absolutely speechless looking like they had won the jackpot. It was about this time that one of the airline stewardesses came by and asked all of the guys to sit down in their seats and stop staring/talking about the girls because it was making them "uncomfortable." Honestly, if a bunch of 20-something-year-old guys looking at you makes you extremely uncomfortable, then DON'T BE A BEAUTY CONTESTANT AND WEAR HOT PINK TANK TOPS WITH THE NAME OF THE PAGEANT ON IT.

Trying to hang out with Bollywood stars and failing miserably

Perhaps the biggest non-business meeting event of the trip that we were all looking forward to was the visit to Film City--otherwise known as the Bollywood movie studios. Although most of us have barely watched at most a couple of Bollywood movies and couldn't name more than one or two Bollywood actors besides the Miss World actress (I am totally blanking on her name), the prospect of going to the actual movie studios and meeting famous actors that other people were obsessed with was very exciting.

We left the hotel very early to go out to P&G and interview a brand manager for Pantene about the Indian shampoo market in rural India--very exciting I know. Although the meeting had tentatively been scheduled for 8:30, it didn't start until well after 9. By the time we got out of the meeting, we were very pressed for time and somehow found ourselves in the back of an old cab without air conditioning with a driver who didn't speak English. I had to coerce the security guard at P&G to explain to the driver where our hotel was. It was the cab ride from hell. Because it was after 10, I had assumed that Mumbai's legendary traffic jams (where three lanes somehow metamorphosed into eight lanes of jam-packed traffic) would have subsided and it would be a fairly straightforward drive back to the hotel. I was totally wrong. I honestly felt like I was in the opening sequence of office space where the grandmother with a walker is going faster than the cars in the traffic jam. Of course, the cab had no air conditioning, it was over 90 degrees outside, and we were in business suits. We'll leave it at that. To top it off, after an hour and a half long cab ride, the driver dropped us off at the wrong Taj hotel--he thought we were staying at the one that the terrorist attacks had happened at. As we were getting the doorman to call us another cab, Angel started asking questions about the terrorist attacks and the bombs right in front of the security officer carrying a gun... kind of awkward. Instead of going back to the hotel to change, we instead found ourselves rushing to the headquarters of Reliance (otherwise known as the guy who is in the process of building the $1 billion skyscraper family home for himself, his wife, and his two kids in downtown Mumbai) and walking into a meeting literally ten minutes before it ended. We looked like HELL. After a quick lunch (where I got to catch up with Prince who has promised to walk me through the presentation when we get back to Evanston), we found ourselves on yet another bus ride.

About thirty minutes into the bus ride (about where we turned off from the main road to get to P&G's building), our bus was hit from behind by a guy driving a small Tata truck. Our bus driver got out of the bus, proceeded to get into a screaming match with the other driver who was bleeding from his head, and actually bitch-slapped the guy across the face. By that point, our leaders had gotten off the bus and one of them ended up giving the other driver 100 rupees--the equivalent of two dollars. The other driver was THRILLED. Honestly, one of the most bizarre interactions I have ever seen.

Eventually, we made it to Film City--or so we thought. As we were driving past the slum literally just outside the gates of film city, we were informed that we were in fact first going to see Whispering Woods, a Bollywood Acting/Screenwriting/Cinematography school. No one told us that it was going to take three hours to literally take a tour of this school. The students were

very reminiscent of the acting types that you would find at NYU, Northwestern, UCLA, USC, etc.; baby-faced teenagers trying to be non-conformist, avant garde artists and coming off looking slightly ridiculous. I think the quick and the dirty is that if any of us were actually interested in media or making movies, we probably would not have been in business school.

EVENTUALLY, we got on the buses and headed up the hill to where the actual movie sets are. Film City is a bit of a misnomer; it is actually a large park where there are a couple of permanent movie sets and where they may throw up temporary sets depending on what is being filmed. In addition, because of the prohibitive cost of filming in India, most Bollywood films are actually done in NZ, the US, Canada, or Europe. We had fun exploring some of the different sets (one of them was a massive castle that looked like something out of the King Kong movie). Bala sadly informed us that although we were supposed to meet some famous actor called Khan, they had cancelled his filming for that day and so there was no one famous to meet. One of the guys in our group, in a desperate act to get a photo with ANYONE started knocking on people's trailer doors to ask them if they would take a photo with him. It didn't work.

After being in a business suit and uncomfortable high heels since 7 a.m., I was exhausted and cranky. When we went out for dinner, I laid down and fell asleep on a bench for an hour or so. I'm getting old.

Schooling the boys in how business is really done

On Wednesday morning, we found ourselves at the headquarters of ICICI Bank, otherwise known as "Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India." Unlike our meetings at Tata, the headquarters of ICICI were in a newly constructured spacious industrial park in one of the suburbs of Mumbai that reminded me a lot of suburban New Jersey headquarters of pharmaceutical companies. Going in, I didn't have extremely high expectations for the meeting. However, I was absolutely blown away by their CEO, Chanda Kochhar. For starters, she was a female CEO of the second largest bank in India, which is almost unheard of. Over a twenty-odd year career, she had worked her way up through the organization to her current position and was now arguably the most powerful woman in the Indian business environment.

Besides that, she was perhaps the smartest, most articulate female executive that I have ever met--and I have met a lot. At the end of her presentation, she had completely convinced me that ICICI was the best bank. I would seriously consider working for her. Unfortunately, she had to leave early so we weren't able to talk with her after the presentation. The funniest part of the presentation was shortly after her departure, one of the members of the Board of Directors introduced a senior vice president at the company with "if you need to go partying in Mumbai, this is your man" and then literally giving the man a high-five. I think some of my classmates went up afterwards to try and take him up on the offer...

The rest of our afternoon was spent at the headquarters of Godrej, a 150-year-old family conglomorate in another suburb of Mumbai. The headquarters were probably the nicest on the entire trip; about 50 years ago, they had bought 3,000 acres of a mangrove swamp and had converted it into an industrial park surrounded by trees and untouched forest--the layout reminded me a lot of IBM's headquarters. Because Bala is on their board, the company went all out and overhelmed us with presentations, copious amounts of food and tea, and tours of such exciting things as their product showroom (they make everything from safes, home furniture and appliances, to hair care products) and their lab for creating mosquito repellant and bug sprays. Essentially, the idea of a family conglomorate in India is quite simple: you take your core business line that the company originally started in, find the most random, unrelated products that have absolutely nothing to do with your core competency, throw in as many of those as possible, and then make a crapload of money. In essence, you do the exact opposite of what every single strategy class in business school would teach you to do in terms of finding synergies, logical product extensions. The funniest thing about it is that it totally works.

Near death experiences in elevators

For whatever reason, there are a disproportionate number of McKinsey alums/offerees on our trip this year. One of the alums, ManV, had actually been based out of the New Delhi office and had spend a considerable amount of time working out of the Mumbai office. To help indoctrinate us into the McKinsey culture and get us excited about our summers, ManV arranged for us to go into the Mumbai office to meet a couple of the associates that he had worked with.

By the time we got out of the Tata meeting, it was pitch black outside and the height of rush hour traffic. We spent about 10 minutes wandering around side streets trying to find two cabs willing to take us to the McKinsey office. Despite the rundown exterior appearance of the building, ManV informed me that the building was in fact the most prestigious office building in all of Mumbai and was the offices for all of the major private equity shops in Mumbai. In addition, until fairly recently, the rents in that building for office space had been the most expensive in all of Asia--even higher than Tokyo.

After a considerable amount of Hindi/coersion/bribery, we managed to get to the office, get through security, and wait for an elevator. We waited, waited, and waited some more and seriously considered bribing one of the elevator operators to bring us the elevator reserved for senior executives and partners (their drivers apparently call up as they are pulling into the parking lot to make sure that the elevator is ready and waiting for their arrival).

Finally, we got into the elevator. As the elevator approached its first stop, I was surprised to discover that our elevator was bouncing. Instead of actually stopping at the floor, the doors opened about a foot above where the floor started and then started bouncing up and down about 1-2 feet before finally settling close to where the doors should have opened in the first place. I looked at ManV and started to get incredibly worried. We finally made it to the 23rd floor and into the reception area. By that point we were exhausted from non-stop travel and severe sleep deprivation. As ManV was talking to one of us, a former colleague of his walked up behind him and slapped him on the back. ManV didn't even notice until someone actually told him that someone had slapped him on the back.

We walked around the absolutely gorgeous offices and were surprised to discover that almost everyone had gone home for the day. We even tried going to the cafeteria; although we found a considerable amount of leftover food/drinks, there was almost no one around (we did find a list of things not to write on slides including one to the effect of "sorry, our EM went to Kellogg and is a marketing person").

We eventually meandered over to Dome, the rooftop bar at the Hotel Intercontinental on Marine Drive. As soon as we sat down, I promptly fell asleep on a couch next to the pool. I am fast discovering that I do not have the stamina that I used to....

Tata is going to take over the world

The first plenary meeting that we had was scheduled was on Tuesday afternoon with Tata Sons. For those of you who may not be familiar with Tata, you soon will be. Their goal is quite simple: take over the world through any means possible. Tata Sons is technically the parent company of the Indian conglomorate. However, it is simply a holding company for roughly 13 seperately traded companies ranging from TCS (IT consulting services), Tata Motors (otherwise known as the guys who are responsible for the $2000 Nano car), Tata Steel, Tata Power, and Indian Hotels to name a few. By way of note, one of the things that I have come to quickly learn about Indian conglomorates is that any concept of synergies, logical business extensions, cross-collaborations between business units is pretty much unheard of. Essentially, all of the stuff that I used to do as a consultant and that I am now studying in business school is not really relevant for most of the Indian business environment.

Through Bala's insane connections (I believe he was/is on the board of a number of the individually traded Tata enterprises as well as Tata Sons), we managed to get a meeting with:

Jayant Pendarkar (VP, TCS Consulting Services)
Kaushik Chatterjee (CFO, Tata Steel)
Ravi Kant (CEO, Tata Motors)
MS Muthuraman (Managing Director, Tata Steel)
Noel Tata (family member; we're not quite sure what he runs)
Raymond the Hawaiian (CEO, Indian Hotels)
And the new Tata Sons CEO

We ended up at the executive offices of TCS in an absolutely beautiful building overlooking the cricket greens in the center of town. Needless to say, it was quite educational to grill these executives about their business operations and how they were going to continue to remain competitive both within India as well as the international environment. I think I was most impressed with the CEO of Tata Motors--he was an incredibly smart, borderline sarcastic individual with a great vision for what the company needed to do to revolutionize the automotive sector. If I was smart, I should probably just aim to get a job after b-school with a major Indian conglomorate, work my way up to a senior management position, and literally take over the world.

After the meeting was over, we went up to the rooftop of the building and had a drinks reception. The newly appointed CEO of Tata Sons (the parent/holding company) actually joined us for drinks and was absolutely brilliant. The funniest part of the evening was when the wind picked up and started blowing Bala's combover hair all over the place, he stated something to the effect of "Bala's feeble attempt to control his hair is similar to Bernake's attempt to fix the US economy." I have never seen 50 people trying so hard not to bust out laughing... I really need to get pictures of it.

Slumming it in Mumbai

Mumbai is the most stressful, chaotic, frustrating city that I have ever travelled to. We landed in Mumbai at about 5 in the morning and managed to collect our bags and clear customs relatively quickly (I think Bala helped with that one considerably). Once we got onto the buses, it was a different story. Although Mumbai is the business capital of India and home to roughly 15 million people, it has absolutely no infrastructure whatsoever. It is an extremely narrow city constrained by a lack of arable or available land and dependent on an antiquated urban planning that was not suited to accommodate the huge influx of itinerant workers from other parts of India. Therefore, what should have been a quick drive from the airport to our hotel in the business district of Mumbai ended up taking over an hour with absolutely no traffic on the road. There are no freeways, lanes are a suggestion (it's routine to see about 8 lanes of traffic in a road with only three lanes of painted lines), and all the drivers on the road feel the need to honk at least 10 times a minute even when there is absolutely no one else on the road (apparently one of the criteria for passing the driving license exams is the number of times that you honk your horn per minute).

Once we got off the buses and collected our bags, I noticed that our hotel (the Taj President) was surrounded by a massive fence, there were newly installed metal detectors, and a disproportionate number of security guards in front of all of the entrances to the hotel. Since the attacks in November, all of the security throughout Mumbai was significantly increased, especially at the Taj hotels (the other Taj hotel was the center of the terrorist attack). I'm not sure if the security guards actually made me feel safer.

The hotel itself was quite nice; the property was fairly new, the rooms were well decorated, and it was a great central location. The only downside was that the walls were paper-thin and I kept hearing everything that was going on in all of the rooms around me (I think I ended up mistakenly opening my door at least half a dozen times for doorbells for other rooms).




After a quick nap, we got back onto the buses to do a quick sightseeing tour of Mumbai. My first impression of Mumbai was that of faded elegance coupled with excruciating poverty. Although Mumbai is the business capital of India and home to some of the most expensive real estate in India, from the exterior appearance of most of the buildings you would actually assume that you were in the run-down capital of a former Soviet block country or in Beirut. The sheer brutality of the monsoon season has stripped most buildings of any type of paint or plaster. Instead, most buildings look absolutely horrible for lack of better description--gray concrete or stone stained with black streaks of pollution and grime. There were a couple of buildings (mainly large central compounds owned by the major industrialist families) that were in somewhat pristine collection. The rest were a combination of British Gothic architecture and office blocks.

I don't think I was prepared for the slums. In many respects, Slumdog Millionaire is a pretty accurate portrayal of what the slums are like. What you do not realize from that movie is that many of these slums are literally right next door to the luxury hotels and expensive apartments throughout Mumbai. Essentially, wherever there was any arable land, slums had sprung up. Over 55% of the Mumbai population lives in the slums and because all of these individuals vote, the government will not do anything to clean up the slums or relocate the slum residents to anywhere else. I honestly didn't know how to respond. Every time we drove past one of the slum areas, I wasn't sure if I should make eye contact with the people who lived there or completely avert my eyes because of the excruciating poverty. It didn't help that every time our bus got stuck in traffic (which was literally all the time) you had people coming up to the bus begging for food and money. Often times, it was extremely young children in tattered clothes carrying one of their younger siblings. More often than not, I found myself averting my eyes or just walking past them as if they didn't exist because of how much it disturbed me.



Perhaps one of the most enjoyable parts of the sightseeing was when we made a detour to a Jain temple. The building was in one of the nicer parts of town and the temple was gorgeous. It was just nice to go into the temple and enjoy some peace and quiet despite the hectic circumstances around us.

I can't pack

I despise planes. After spending a disproportionate amount of my life flying all over the world and being stuck in airports, on the runway, and having claustrophobia and panic attacks on overly cramped planes, I was extremely apprehensive at the prospect of spending 18+ hours on a plane to India. That, coupled with the horrible reputation of Air India did nothing to alleviate my concerns.

After finishing my finance final and getting home at 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, I realized that I had all of four hours to pick up all of my medications (malaria tablets, food poisoning, and the like), do my laundry, and actually pack my bag and make it to the airport in time for my flight. I found myself in a mad dash literally pulling all of my clothes out of the closet and my storage unit and trying to find enough business clothes and casual clothes to survive two weeks in a country where the average temperature is over 90 degrees. Let's just say that I'm not looking forward to getting back to my apartment because it honestly looks like a nuclear holocaust went down... I thankfully did make it to McManus and the waiting bus with about five minutes to spare and two overly stuffed bags (whoever thought they needed 8 pairs of high heels for a two week trip seriously needs help).

However, the flight to Mumbai was quite remarkable; when we got onto the plane, we realized that the plane was 80% empty. Essentially, every single person in our group had a complete row to ourselves on the way to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Mumbai. I don't think I have ever had that much personal space on a flight ever. The downside was the airline stewardesses were absolutely evil and had a horrible habit of turning on the lights, shaking you awake every couple of hours, and generally looking pissed off every time they saw you.

The highlight of the flight was on the second leg from Frankfurt to Mumbai. At the beginning of the flight, the pilot got onto the loudspeaker and announced that he was pleased to have the distinguished pleasure of flying the "Kellogg School of Management, Bala, and Sam Pitroda." I don't think anyone else on the plane actually cared... It was quite ironic that Sam was on our flight; he was actually one of our class speakers and had actually freaked the hell out of most of our class with his absolutely militant views on the inferiority of the American and European education system and his determination to use his prior success in introducing and revolutionizing the cellphone industry in India to completely redesign university education in India. Nothing like a zealot to make everyone feel absolutely paranoid...

On the upside, we did make it to India in one piece...