Experience India! Day 6

A picture speaks a thousand words, thus I’m going to decorate this particular post with beautiful pictures from Mysore and Srirangapatna. Firstly, I’d like to give a brief history of Mysore.

Mysore was ruled by the Wodeyar dynasty, except for a brief period in the late 18th century when Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan took power. Today it’s a peaceful and beautiful tourist centre attracting thousands of tourists from all corners of the world. Both the Wodeyars and Tipu Sultan were powerful kings. The Wodeyars were patrons of art and culture and have significantly contributed to the cultural growth of the city.

The Mysore trip started quite early in the morning because Mysore is about 3 hrs away from Bangalore and we wanted to make full use of the day. Most of us didn’t have breakfast, so our first stop was at a café where we grabbed some quick breakfast and continued our journey.

Then we arrived at Srirangapatna where we visited Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace. The gateway to the palace is one of the things which I really admired. From outside the palace didn’t appear to be very impressive and it was pretty much covered as well. Then we discovered intricate paintings and architecture inside the palace. Despite the bad lighting inside, we still managed to enjoy the paintings and everything.

Next stop was at the Tomb of Tipu Sultan. I was mesmerized by the architecture of the building and the surrounding greenery. Some of the Indian Muslims paid their respect by circling the tomb while singing some verses from the Holy Quran. I’m very proud that I’ve visited the Tomb of a very powerful and brave King.

Then, we headed to Jamia masjid and Hindu temple which was just a few minutes from the Tomb of Tipu Sultan. I understand that under Tipu Sultan’s rule, other religions were embraced by him and there was a freedom of worship.

Next, we visited St. Philomena’s Church which is nearby Mysore Palace. This church is really a majestic one and I even took a picture of Mother Mary. Here the locals have given her a different outlook by tying a silk saree around her. Very Interesting.

Our last stop was at Mysore Palace and this was the official residence of the Wodeyars and now it’s one of the top tourist attractions in South India. The palace was surrounded by beautiful landscape. Within the palace complex, there are two grand Hindu temples to serve the former royal family of Mysore. Again, the architecture was so unique and it instigated me to do further research on it. I found out that the architecture style is described as Indo- Saracenic which is the product of mixing Hindu, Muslim, Rajput and Gothic styles of architecture.

In the night, the illuminated Mysore palace was so magnificent and I was really attached to it. The music played by the Indian Band was, undeniably, a feast to the ears. We concluded our trip with this beautiful worth- to- see scenery.

Experience India! Day 5

Basically, Day 5 and 6 were the days which gave some break and energy to continue for the next few days. On day 5, the first programme on the list was cultural workshop, so I thought it will be another monotonous day with some lectures in the morning but I was proven wrong, it was an exciting Bollywood dance class. As an Indian, I do watch Bollywood movies but I’ve never thought of dancing like them. I’ve seen Tollywood(Telugu), Kollywood (Tamil) and Bollywood(Hindi) films, each film industry caters to different Indian fans, and there are slight variations between the South and North. Each Indian film industry has its own distinct flavor and style. Now, let’s move on to the Bollywood dance class. I have to admit that this is my first Bollywood dance class that I‘ve ever attended in my life. Initially, when the Instructor, Ms. Minoti Ramachandra, started the class, I was quite uncertain whether I’ll be able to finish off the dance movements as I didn’t have any prior experience in dancing. I learnt that Bollywood dance is all about the body shakes and sizzling body movements. In conclusion, we enjoyed dancing and were able to grasp the Bollywood dance movements quite well.

Next, we went to Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, a well- known and prestigious institution for post-graduate studies, where Prof. Iyer gave a short introduction of the institution and we went for a stroll around the magnificent campus, accompanied by Prof. Iyer’s students. The campus is such an eco- friendly place and it was a feast for the eyes to see so much of flora and fauna flourishing in that place. It’s entirely a different experience and world inside the campus, a great place to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. Also, tthe students proudly shared with me that IISc will be celebrating its 100^th anniversary soon. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Prof Iyer for this beautiful and informative visit to IISc.

Thereafter, we headed straight to Commercial Street. In my previous post, I’ve mentioned about Commercial Street also. Now, I shall elaborate a little bit more on this place, Commercial Street is a shopaholic’s paradise and let me warn you that it’s also a big colourful maze. At this point of time the skyscraping mosques and some prominent buildings play a big role in letting us know our whereabouts but unfortunately we got lost in the maze and ended up taking an auto vehicle back to the meeting point.

For those who want to explore Commercial Street, they should avoid weekends because the streets are usually congested with people and vehicles. A good place to bargain, especially at the roadsides and smaller streets. To a normal person, the entire place might look unorganized and dirty but I found out that there’s beauty in it. The real beauty is in the way the Indians function in such a messy place and situation. That’s all for now, I’ll be back later with more posts on the Mysore trip.

Recognizing the Poor as Customers in India: Business Success Stories and Examples [Part 1]

Back in my Technopreneurship class a year ago, my lecturer recommended some books to read. One of them is "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" by C.K. Prahalad. I hadn't got the chance to read the book though, until one of my flatmates put the book in our flat's 'private library'.

Well, the book is an interesting read. It outlines many examples of success stories of companies who recognize the poorest of the poor (i.e. those at the bottom of the economic pyramid) as their (potential) customers, instead of thinking that they aren't because they probably can't afford to buy the companies' products. Most of these examples actually happen in India.

Before I move on, here are some statistics that may help put things into better perspective.

India's Characteristics in Brief

• huge population (about 1.1 billion people)
  
• about 72% of them living in rural areas and doing agriculture-related stuff
• 22% lives below the poverty line
  
• 61% literacy rate
  
• large linguistics diversity (at least 10 major languages out of a total of more than a thousand languages) - most of the people I meet can speak 5-6 languages
• more than 100 million mobile phone subscribers
  

With 22% of the population living below the poverty line, if a company recognizes the poor as its customers, that means a lot of customers. But of course, it's not as easy as it sounds. Designing products for the poor doesn't simply mean sacrificing quality in order to reduce price. It means tweaking your product so that it meets the needs of the poor - affordable prices, durability, user friendliness, among others.

During my time in India, through "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" book, the Indian Innovative Summit sessions I attended, and others, I've come across some interesting case studies and examples of what companies and other organizations do here that either empowers the poor or turning them into customers or both.

Here they are, in categories:

Healthcare

• Aravind Eye Care
  While a cataract operation costs about US$2,500 to US$3,000 in United States, it costs only US$50 to US$300 in Aravind Eye Care. However, over 60% of Aravind Eye Care's patients get their surgeries for free. Despite all this, Aravind Eye Care is very profitable.
  
  Why?
  The reason in short: process innovation.
  
  Aravind Eye Care reduces the need for (pricey) specialized doctors in the various phases of diagnosis and treatment before and after the surgery. Dr. Venkataswamy, the founder, developed and standardized the Aravind process: patient care, testing for vision problems, and postoperative work are done by youth from local villages that are trained for one specific task. The doctors perform only the surgeries. With this system, the doctors can perform more than 50 surgeries per day. Every doctor performs more than 2,000 operations per year, while the national average in India is 300.
  
  
• Jaipur Foot
  The cost of a prosthetic foot in the United States: about US$8,000.
  The cost of a prosthetic foot made by Jaipur Foot: US$30.
  
  Yet, Jaipur Foot is designed carefully to meet the needs of Indian customers:
  - it's made from local materials, because the government limits import of foreign materials
  - it's made considering the working lifestyle and culture of the vastly agricultural India: walking on uneven ground, squatting, sitting cross-legged
  
  Similar to Aravind Eye Care, they train the local people to be involved in the various stages of patient care, thereby reducing cost.
  
  More information: Jaipur Foot : Our Special Technology
  

[to be continued with more stories in IT, Energy, etc]

Sources:

• "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" by C.K. Prahalad
• Wikipedia:India, Wikipedia:Indian Demographics
  
• India's mobile subscriber base crosses 400 million
  

The Day of the "Hat-Trick"!

So now we have reached the halfway mark and about 4 days straight of company visits and lectures. Finally we get to have some cardio exercise and fun at the same time! This is the day I dubbed as the "Hat-Trick"!

The first "goal" of the day was when half of today's itinerary is assigned for cultural exposure and guess what? We got to do Bollywood dancing! I have actually been attending dance classes back home in Singapore, which really got me even more excited about today's dance lesson! An actual dance instructor, Ms. Minoti Ramachandra, arrived (albeit a little late) and started us off with warmups with some very signature Bollywood dance movements. After which, we got down (literally) for some really interesting dance choreography! At the end of this lesson, we finally got to understand what some of those intricate hand signs made in the traditional Indian dances actually mean!


After a hearty lunch, it was time for our 2nd "goal" of the day! We took a ride down to the famous Indian Institute of Science and who better to welcome us than Prof. Iyer himself of IISc! After a short presentation on the institute, the professor introduced us to a couple of his current students.
These students of his gave us a really great tour of the beautiful and green campus. The campus is nothing like the ones you find in Singapore as you will see from the photos below. Finally by the end of the tour, we made friends with some of the students and even have connected up on Facebook!

Finally, to complete the "Hat-Trick", we headed down to Commercial Street where for probably the first time, I felt really immersed into the Indian culture and street life! On the surface, Commercial Street looks a lot like another Bugis Village, but as you travel deeper into the back lanes of the area, you really start to see colourful and bright lights of small shops selling, well... almost everything! Just have a look at the photos!






And that marked the end of a tiring but yet most fulfilling day of the whole workshop yet. The whole bunch of us headed back and looked forward to the next day which would be the most exciting yet! Mysore!

Uniqueness of Bangalore

Bangalore city is the capital of Karnataka state and the official language is Kannada.Bangalore city is really a cosmopolitan city. And there is a good mixture of all kinds of South Asians, of course, majority of them are Kannadigas, the native people of that region.

While traveling on the roads, I noticed that there are so many Andhra restaurants and Hyderabadi briyani restaurants, so immediately I questioned my driver and he said that there’s a sizeable Telugu- speaking community, some migrated to this state from the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh in the past and the recent surge of Telugus is due to job opportunities in the “Silicon Valley “of India.


In places like Commercial Street where the predominant landmarks are the skyscraping mosques, there is a sizeable Indian Muslim community and Urdu is prevalent in these places. Even the merchants and auto drivers prefer to converse in Urdu or Hindi, both Hindi and Urdu are almost similar except for the script and certain words. (Urdu has a significant number of loan words from Arabic, Persian and Turkish languages) I was mesmerised by the rich Arab culture in Commercial Street. Commercial Street closely resembles the streets in Old Hyderabad except for the architecture of the buildings. I heard Tamil as well in the same place and learnt that there is a big Tamil- speaking population also.

In the pictures: Commercial Street

Even one of our drivers speaks a different version kannada which sounded like Telugu occasionally. Not bad, I was able to figure out the sentences by myself. It seems his mother’s village is situated in a place where Karnataka shares border with Andhra Pradesh and that is the key reason behind his unique dialect. It’s nice to know that Indians, both from rural and urban areas, have accepted other Indian languages for everyday usage and it has given birth to many other dialects as well. These dialects are usually used in homes (domestic usage). Meanwhile, they still preserve and support the official language without injecting foreign Indian language words into it.

I spotted many Indians from the North- eastern part of India residing and working in Bangalore. Initially, I thought they were Chinese but I was wrong, they are Indians and they spoke perfect Hindi also. It’s nice to see them working in big IT industries, branded shops and restaurants and thanks to Globalisation which has really shrunken our world. Oh yes, I forgot we are living in a global village. It’s not only in India, I see them in Singapore restaurants also.

India itself is very colourful and it is a very multi- racial country also. In fact, India is more diverse than China in terms of language, culture and race. There are many things which Singapore can learn and adopt from India. The co-existence of many languages, dialects, religions, and communities can pose various threats to India but the Indian government has implemented laws which do not favour any particular group or individual and it’s successful in maintaining the law and order. In most parts of India, we can see Hindus and Muslims living side by side peacefully and the government and the citizens deserve the applause from us and everyone. Regardless of the differences, India is starting to shine and the country is developing so fast that we might lose out to them in certain aspects.

I will be sharing more cultural stuff with you in the coming days. And just look out for my Day 5 and Day 6 posts which might be combined.