Here is the videocast of Focus India 2012! Enjoy watching it 
We had an amazing time, thanks to everyone who supported it and who made it as special as it was. Thanks also to everyone who joined our joint final event together with ConnectUS and Insight China 2012 yesterday in Olten.
Even though we are slightly sad, that it is now officially over, we are looking forward to Focus India 2013 and we wish the new project team already now, all the best!
The third and last Newsletter of Focus India 2012 is published. Read more about our successful On-Site Seminar in it and feel what we’ve experienced in these two weeks. Enjoy reading it.
Newsletter #3 – Feel the differences
After two contrastful and impressive weeks full of new information, the Focus India 2012 delegation safely arrived in Switzerland. We would like to thank our main sponsor Accenture as well as our other sponsors and supporter for enabling such an experience. We truly experienced the unexpected and discovered countless contrasts.
Today we started once again early in the morning to our last company visit of Focus India 2012! A two and a half hour bus drive brought us to the „Universal Business School”. It was quite unexpected to see such a huge modern building between mountains and little villages. But as we learned during our on-site seminar: expect the unexpected!
After a warm welcome from Tarun Anand, Co-Founder of the Universal Business School and Managing Director and Senior Company Officer of Thomson Reuters South Asia in India, he showed us the whole campus area. It was impressive! After this short tour around the campus, we enjoyed presentations about strategic management in India as well as about Rapidly Developing Economies (RDE) and thoughts about “Building winning teams is a game of Inches”.
As it was the last official dinner during the On-Site Seminar, a playful and surprisingly entertaining evening was organised by the project team. Groups of 5 were built and various games, such as “dress like an Indian”, draw the Indian map and include the cities visited as well as a role-play of a scene happened during the two weeks were rated by the project team. Despite the aim to win the game, everyone enjoyed the evening and may soon be suffering of sore muscles from laughing. What a great end to such a great project!
Sophie Frei, Peter Röthlisberger
10 Photos
This morning we started our day with a feedback session where we talked about the impressions we’ve experienced so far. Later we visited the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) where we got some insights about trade and exchange. Furthermore, they gave us some background information about the history of the BSE and showed us the convention hall where approximately 1’000 people used to trade.
In the afternoon we went to Magic Bus, a charity programme for underprivileged children (families with an income of less than 2 Dollars per day). They try to educate these kids through sports. Currently, the entire programme includes 200’000 kids and its target is to have 1’000’000 kids by the year 2014. On a playground in the middle of the slum where these families live, we were thrilled to play football with 50 kids. When we arrived, we were warmly welcomed by singing and dancing kids. After a funny introduction round, the kids were allowed to choose some of us to join their teams. Despite of the heat, all of us enjoyed playing football and having fun with the kids. Due to the heat, the playfield was very dry, so all of us went home dirty but happy. This rather different afternoon programme was definitely one of the highlights of the onsite-trip.
After a short shower we had dinner at the Swiss Business Hub. We heard a presentation about the work of the OSEC in India and we were told to ”how to ride the Indian elephant”. When the presentation was over, the relaxing part of the evening started. We had a delicious meal on a roof top with a breathtaking view.
Chantal Ulmer, Jana Weis, Marcel Bachmann
11 Photos
Accenture is a top employer in India and the Focus India delegation was privileged to visit the prestigious Mumbai office, with 8000+ employees, one of the six Accenture locations in India. After an HR presentation, the delegation was treated to a hands-on demonstration of a live video conference with Accenture, Bangalore using the latest technologies. We were able to interact by asking questions to Accenture Bangalore.
The third part illustrated an example of a global project case study based on a client in Switzerland where the Accenture Bangalore team members are able to use their intercultural expertise. We finished our visit with an appetising Indian lunch in the Accenture staff canteen followed by a drive to BBDO through rich suburbs contrasted by the Dharavi slums, one of the largest slums in the world.
BBDO is a young advertisement agency located in Mumbai. The young team told us about exciting and cutting-edge projects and stories. They gave us an example where they not only developed an ad but a whole movement inspiring Indians to donate books for under-privileged children, forming the “Aviva Great Wall of Education”. We felt that for BBDO it is important to create great Acts, not only Ads. BBDO also tries to explore the “edges” of communication, which despite being sometimes risky, on many occasions has sparked the consumers’ passion.
We would like to thank our main Sponsor Accenture first of all for supporting this project and enable our students to experience this unique country and for hosting us.
Fabienne Aubry, Pieter Perrett
8 Photos
A 2 hours bus drive through the countryside of Maharashtra just outside Mumbai headed us to the new and modern building of one of the leading company of tapes. The company was originally founded in 1927 as the industrial products division of the health care giant Johnson & Johnson and taken over by the Premchand Group (PRS) in 1999.
We were warmly welcomed by the general Manager and his people with a traditionally Chai-the, coffee and even a fresh coconut for each of us. After a short introduction of PRS given by the general Manger and the head of the Marketing Division, we were shown a movie of the historical trading background of Bombay (now Mumbai). For a more enhancing plant visit, we were divided into for groups according to our interests and major of studies. Especially we were given a more detailed introduction into the R&D, Production and the Quality Management Division. During the company visit we realised the importance of safety regulations. The raw materials are highly flammable and those have to be fought with CO2. Therefore, PRS fire prevention measures are very sophisticated and even include own educated fire fighters. The visit ended with a delicious and traditional lunch offered by PRS. As a give away we received a biography of Premchand Roychand, one of the wealthiest and most prominent citizen of Bombay, also known as the “Cotton King” or the “Bullion King”.
Coming back to the hotel, our day ended white a visit of the “Crawford Market” in the city of Mumbai, which was very impressive.
Stefanie Fehr, Lukas Wyss
7 Photos
After an early wake up, we safely arrived in Mumbai. Mumbai, also known as Bombay (the Portuguese name of the city), is a city with more than 20 million inhabitants and less cows, goats and sheeps compared to Baroda. It is remarkable that the Victoria Station (railway station in Mumbai) is used by approximately 10 million people per day and only has 4 platforms, whereas Zurich has 24 platforms with barely half of the people commuting. More exciting and unbelievable are the “Dabba Wallahs”, which is a distribution system for food, where wives are cooking lunch for their husbands at work. The Dabba Wallahs pick up the food from the housewives and brings it to a collecting place, where the food is being sorted and delivered to their husbands by another Dabba Wallah. AMAZING how it works (they work with only numbers and symbols). Absolutely remarkable is, that the Dabba Wallahs are always in time considering that they deliver around 200’000 meals a day.
In the afternoon we visited Novartis Research Development Center and had an interesting meeting with the CEO of Novartis India, Mr Ranjit Shahani. He showed us the opportunities and challenges of the pharmaceutical industry all over the world and its future. He furthermore gave us a insight into his daily schedule and mentioned that he strictly differentiates between his private and his business life (e.g. no business E-.Mails at home).
We are looking forward for the upcoming five days in Mumbai.
Eveline Bertschi, Christian Bader, Axel Schilling
9 Photos
Our day started with a quick feedback session in the morning. The whole delegation shared their experiences of the last days and reflected the most fascinating highlights.
Afterwards we headed off to ABB, that operates in robotics as well as in the power and automation technology. Mr Hofmann, the high potential product manager, warmly welcomed us. In 2011, Mr Hoffmann moved with his wife and three children from Zürich to Baroda and gave us a very authentic insight into the cultural differences between Switzerland and India. Amongst other things, he pointed out some facts he has learned about India, such as the very complex Indian bureaucracy, the very cheap haircuts (1chf), the more flexible timeframe of finishing a project and the importance of the family. After this introduction, we had a look at the factory itself which was very impressive. Following, we were invited for an Indian lunch to the company cafeteria.
In the afternoon, we went to Axtel Industries LTD, a nutrition machine producer. Axtel has a range of regular and customised machines. Their main focus is on cleaning, graining, storing and mixing of any kind of food. Fascinating for us, they further informed us about good relationships to two of our sponsors! During the look around the company, we were able to see the designer offices and the production facility. Axtel is delivering machineries for very famous brands e.g. companies in the nutrition, chemical, pharmacy, and cosmetic industry.
In the evening, we left for a typical Gujarat Indian meal and got a closer insight into local specialities.
Marilen Dürr, Jan Preisig
9 Photos
Having spent our first night in Baroda, we were looking forward to an eventful day: The morning was planned for sightseeing, whereas the afternoon implied company visits in Baroda. We took off to a beautiful, old mosque called “Champaner”, which was about an hour away by bus. The entire group was impressed by the incredibly detailed work in the stone walls and ceiling of the mosque. Imagining it was all done by hand it’s simply unbelievable! To us it was no wonder this site belongs to the UNESCO world cultural heritage. Very close to the first mosque was a smaller one, which we visited shortly after. Here also, the majority of the group was impressed with enchanted expressions on their faces.
Then the second part of the day started, which began with a warm welcome at the company Integra India: Everyone received a rose at the entrance (thank you Corinne J). After being introduced to some key facts, we got a very detailed insight on the production plant which helped us to understand the processes of the company. It was impressive to see how much value was set on excellent quality in manufacturing e. g. by manual labor. Following was a great lunch with Indian and European pizza provided by our hosts from Integra India, the visit continued by a view of the manufacturing facilities of Oerlikon Textile, which is situated next to Integra India. Not only the engineering students, but all of us were very interested in the manufacturing process of textile machines.
Already at nine o’clock in the morning, we found the weather in Baroda hotter than in Delhi. This perception turned out to be true, since our guide told us it had been 41 degrees Celsius in Baroda the day before. It became increasingly warmer during the day, nevertheless the group remained focused regarding the interesting insights and views we got of how high quality machines are produced in India.
The day ended with a quick dip in the hotel pool and an Indian barbecue at “Barbecue Nation” in Baroda.
Hjördis Hansen, Benjamin Gugger
11 Photos
