Metro to Koti

Chris Eilertson is in India as well.  He joined Ganesh and I on our adventure to take the metro down to Koti.  Koti is in the old city of Hyderabad, it's a very different place to the tall buildings and wide roads here in HiTech City.  People are going every which way, there are street vendors selling everything from fresh sugarcane juice, to clothes and household items.

The metro was under construction the first time I visited Hyderabad. it's now up and running with 3 lines and more on the way.  For a city with the kind of traffic that Hyderabad suffers from, these sorts of large infrastructure projects are essential.

The metro is a really impressive setup.  Large, safe, clean, air conditioned cars and large stations.  The system runs on elevated lines, which means that it can get right in to the areas of the city that are worst affected by traffic.

One of the Koti intersections with the metro line on the right side:

Once we got to Koti, Ganesh was nice enough to treat us to some shopping where I got a traditional south Indian kurta and pants, plus a nice short one.  Here's me and Ganesh with my short kurta:

Idli - Breakfast Staple

Here in the south of India, Idlis are very popular for breakfast.  They're kind of like a warm, spongy rice cake.  More info here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idli

As they note in the wikipedia article, the fermented lentils that are added to the batter break down the starches in the rice so that you have cake that's packed with energy.  You typically eat these with a little chutney, or in my case a lot (on top).  Anyway, it's a nice fast breakfast!

Hyderabad Craft Brewing

Monday evening a few folks from the team took me out to one of Hyderabad's new craft breweries, Prost Brewing.  Being from San Diego, where we've got more than 100 craft breweries and being a home brewer, it's very interesting to compare what I know to what's going on in Hyderabad.  Just the fact that people are brewing craft beer in this country is a big accomplishment.  When you think about all of the government red tape and logistical challenges that stand in your way, such as permits and sourcing climate sensitive ingredients like hops and yeast, you realize how impressive it is to simply start and run a brewery here.

As always in Hyderabad, the food was plentiful, and in the case of Prost, the beer was strong:

Day 1 - Nothing Ever Stands in the Way of Progress

I remember 15 years ago when I started at Qualcomm and we as a company started working with TCS, an Indian consulting/outsourcing firm.  It was a big change for those of us in Qualcomm IT.  We'd never worked with people in different time zones, never mind people who were now on the other side of the planet.

7 or 8 years later, Qualcomm established its own office and employee IT presence, in Hyderabad, reducing our TCS footprint a bit.  When we established what we call QIPL, we moved a fair bit of our TCS headcount in to the QIPL office.  We also obviously converted some of our San Diego workforce in to India employees.

In 2012 when I first came to Hyderabad and Hitech city, it was eye opening.  Standing at my hotel window and looking around at all the big buildings, filled with employees of big American and European companies, like Bank of America, Deloitte, Amazon, Broadcom, etc; you realized that the world just wasn't the same as it was 10 years earlier. 

When it started, QIPL IT had 1 floor in one small building.  Now Qualcomm has 5000 employees in Hyderabad (mostly Engineering, but still a lot of IT).  Now when you walk the streets of Hitech city, you see Qualcomm buildings everywhere.  When you stay at the Westin hotel, which sits at the centre of the city, you run in to one Qualcomm San Diego employee after another.  It's very eye opening and an amazing statement of all that our India employees have accomplished.  These days QIPL and Bangalore Engineering crank out entire modem and processor products on their own.  QIPL IT owns our global operations function.  India has become a core of what we do as a company.

I'm back for the 3rd installment

I flew in to Mumbai this time.  Shweta is going to come join me next week in her hometown, Mumbai.  So I flew here.  I'm flying return to Hyderabad today.  1 Week there for work and then we'll have two weeks together to visit her family.

Super excited.