Who am I? What am I doing here? Am I able to catch up with the speed of living here?
I'm participating in the SAP Social Sabbatical program, which brought a team of nine colleagues, from different parts of the globe, to Bangalore, the "silicon valley" of India. First impressions are more than mind blowing. Such a different culture, lifestyle, working habits, environment, nature and food.
The city is so rich of aromas, architecture, traffic jams, different businesses, religions and noises. And every piece of this colorful puzzle is hitting your senses in the very first moment. It is an incredible experience.
Those thoughts are challenging my mind while my eyes are looking for an opportunity to cross the street.
While being a sponge for everything what Bangalore is offering we need to get to know each other and be ready for taking the real challenge which gathers us here - accomplishing our SAP Social Sabbatical mission. It is all about helping the Indian entrepreneurial society to grow and progress.
One part of our team is helping the NEN to measure its social impact and improve its communication and social media channels for reaching the entrepreneurs.
The second sub team is working with Sattva to strengthen the ecosystem of Social Enterprises in India - find more details by reading Find me if you can: connecting the dots of Social Enterprises in India.
The third sub team (which I'm part of) is dealing with NovoJuris and its future business positioning, growth and scalability. The impact expected is a fast growth for a start-up company, which is dealing with legal services mainly in the area of new technology start-ups.
I'm a person with technical expertise and this project is big challenge as well as a huge opportunity to extend my knowledge while having a direct social impact in the fast growing entrepreneurship society in India. So the excitement is at the highest possible level and all this thanks to SAP's sponsorship and the perfect organisation and support from CDC Development Solutions, a non-profit, non-governmental organization, which is providing innovative, market-driven solutions utilizing a variety of methodologies to create sustainable economic development in over 80 countries on 5 continents.
Working together with my colleagues Kathrin and Frauke both from Germany is a real pleasure. We are so focused exploring and documenting the NovoJuris' current working processes, interactions with clients, market share, market position and services provided. The challenging scope of work is the reason to deep dive in all legal and secretary services offered from the young team of lawyers at NovoJuris lead by Sharda Baladji. The data collected helps us to dig the first inches of the NovoJuris' road to growth and success. We almost lost our sense of time. In a period of one week we became a part of the NovoJuris team, freely sharing our thoughts with them, having lunch together and fighting for NovoJuris' better future together.
As the world doesn't end up when the sun is set, also our Indian story continues after 18:00 too. Dinners and walks in Bangalore with the whole team together are a wonderful experience. We are exploring the city and our daily achievements too. Sharing our progress and struggles on client side with our colleagues helps us learning more from each other and be more helpful and efficient the next day at work. So having sub teams is really just the administrative part, we are acting as one team of professionals. And I'm just thinking to myself "This cannot be real, we met each other for the first time only a week ago". Our team name is Benda Kaalu (Boiled Beans), related to the ancient history of Bangalore. We had a wonderful weekend in the city of Mysore, visiting Indian famous palaces and temples and getting more familiar with the history of our host country India. The visit to Mysore's open air market filled us with unforgettable emotions decorated with aromas from the local fruits, vegetables, flowers, handmade perfumes, colors and cookies.
Refreshed and energized we are back behind our desks giving our best for achieving our goals and having a real impact on Indian emerging and fast growing market.
- SAP Managed Tags: