A secrete pray during my Barcelona trip

My first visit to the most beautiful city & also first time at MWC(Mobile World congress), finally I thought it's time to blog about my memorable experiences.

Luckily this time I was accompanied by a lovely colleague & more of a friend. She is the most happily married women I have so far seen, carries an amazing sense of humor, a bad fortune teller & believes that I would meet my dream man in an airport.

At the Frankfurt airport we came across with a so called face-reader guy. These were his reading about my face, “ U r not married, we are going to meet on ### date at this same place, don’t take up the Barcelona street alone, someone will call out your name, be careful. Also you should stay away from alcohol”.

Flight to Barcelona was amazing & the view of the ocean was very pleasant & it was gearing my excitement. As we landed, realized that language is the biggest barrier here. Spanish people hardly talk English, what we could understand is just numbers.

My hotel reception guys were a bunch of jokers, very handsome, helpful indeed :) whenever I used to approach them, they all 3 used to give me a very funny & weird smile. Gosh guys are so difficult to understand.

Craze of tasting typical traditional veg-spanish food, made us ask for the bill before the food arrived as we didn’t wanted to fall short of money. Paid 54 Euros for 20% of stuff that I could digest.

Me & my friend got stuck in elevator with a crazy Spanish non-English speaker guy. Our mistake of taking a service lift made this man feel the happiest guy for that movement and he just couldn’t stop giving us flying kisses.

That Sunday evening dinner with my team members will always be memorable. At times I feel getting drunk is good- helps one forget worries, speak your heart out & just be yourself.

Learnt never keep your cellphone away from yourself, as it would lead you to not reading a important message & might just hurt someone. Why does it happen that you wish for someone be close to you and when its all happening we tend to run away. Well I was just not OK of my such wishes coming true.

At the MWC lunch time, all the Indians used to gather at the Maharaja restaurant & enjoy the look-like Indian food.

Valentine's day & decided to take up the Ramblas street. Love was in air that evening. Heart shaped balloons, flowers, lovers kissing on the street & music all around, that evening was really special. For the first time I felt like this night should never get over.

I was returning back to my hotel & here I heard someone shouting not my name (as the face reader predicted) but saying “Indian girl”.

We are so used to see queues at bus stand & railways stations in India, but after 6 pm at the MWC as the day end we used to wait in a big queue for the taxis. I used to freely walk out of the MWC campus, but had to struggle to get in again, as I used to forget my ID proof each time. I was a popular face for the security people.

Olympic beach was a treat to watch during the evening times. Best place for me in the entire city.

The experience of wearing Indian dress (salwar kameez) was interesting. You walk on the street and all will look at you as you are an alien. At the MWC I was requested for a photograph, and when I told them about my camera phoniness, it just sounded like a story for them. I was the colorful girl of the day where everyone one had black, white, brown formals on. I am so proud of being an Indian.

Ready to Eat was the only solution that was left, after the international Spanish food which I was totally done with. This madness of Indian food made me & my friend walk on the street in our night-suite to get into hotel cafeteria as we didn’t wanted to cross our team sitting in the bar that evening.

It was time to say goodbye to the beach city, but has it ever happened to you’ll that something caught your eyes & you forgot the whole world around looking at it. I left the city with a secret prayer.

From a Girl to a Women

A feminist during her college days,

is career-minded and career oriented.

play the game of hide and seek with her suitor,

dare to stay happily unmarried all her life.

buy flowers for herself,

feel the wind on her face,

go camping, biking,

be shy, be bold,

trust men occasionally,

give that second chance to everyone,

be a romantic,

get emotionally hyped over nothing and cool down suddenly,

go on a diet, yet eat chocolates and ice creams,

love being a woman,

get high and stay high on life, love her man and her reflection,

learn to love herself,

kiss herself goodnight in the mirror,

break rules – lead the dances,

drive her man’s car,

manage his business, wear his clothes

yet know that he’s a man and she’s the woman,

get flattered,

wear latest fashion and wear fine diamonds

for no special reason,

lay down principles in her life,

go out for window shopping all alone,

know the way to her man’s heart,

never forget the girl within.

Analysis of source of competitive success

It was a privilege being invited to be a part of Chief-Executive forum where Prof.Sharon Belenzon from Duke University shared his 3 case studies, giving a different prospective towards “Analysis of source of competitive success.

Cirque-du Soleil: Company which found the mantra of success in a dyeing industry like Circus

Strategic Analysis majorly includes how the market is moving & how we can bring more value to customers. A dyeing industry is where we see inability to Innovate. Prof shared the case study of Cirque-du Soleil a company which stepped in the dyeing Industry like circus and proved that with innovation profits are guaranteed.

Things that they did:

- Brought in new elements (music, theater)

- Raised the bar & expectation of the customer satisfaction

- Eliminating the threats (animals, risk acts)

They brought in new elements to circus and invented a new business model. The question was what if many players come into competition, can this business model be patented. We had a discussion on what could be called as Innovation. Is it about inventing a new thing from the scratch or is it about getting components & packaging to build a product. We got the answers when we took the example of the guy who claimed to invent car windshield.

MTN & Orange in Africa: Company which sales with financial weak customers

The key decision is in which industry you would like to invest and start a business. There is no industry which is attractive. Look at the following features before entering into any industry:

- Easy Entry

- Opportunities of problems to solve

- Scope for innovation

- Geography distribution

I totally loved the Game theory introduction. Coming back to this case, its difficult to sell a product or a service to poor customer, but products like Shampoo sashes, interest rate payable for load, prepaid cards are some great business model which proves that the profit margin is more when attempted to make sales to poor customers. From the case study quick things to learn, if a company plans to do business with poor customer market are:

- Build the product at a low cost

- Do mass production

- Thinks of innovative revenue model

- Innovation in service rather than the product

- Strategy to convince to buy the product

- Skilled ways to handle corruptions

Country wise economy model:

This session was a real eye opener, gave me a different prospective to look at the economy model of each country. US economy model is where resource allocation is totally in the hands of the shareholder i.e Market and that is why we see that they are able to handle recessions smartly. They have the ability to adapt to changes easily. On the other hand if we look at India economy it’s basically in the hands of Business groups like Tata’s, Birla’s and Reliance. The ownership & control is diversified and here is the problem. Intercompany Dividend tax has to be introduced, and then we would see a real completion in the market.

The question is why don’t we have some real big Indian IT product company ruling the world today? Why do we see few entrepreneurs making it big like Tata’s?

CEMEX: Company which could maintain a monopoly in multiple regions in a competitive space.

If we look at CEMEX, it’s a company which is spread geographically and has the highest price as compared to all their competitors. Let’s find the answer to why & what made them build this monopoly

- Look for the market where growth opportunity is more

- Country which is politically week

- Less competitors

- Keep the price high and invest only 60% of the total resources

- Be scalable based on the demand

My take away from the session:

Go to the industry which has many problems, link resources to those problems and drive in innovation. Success is in all industry but what’s important is how well you design your strategy and feel the market pulse and act.