First Impressions of Bangalore

Bangalore is the city which is now known to be the Tech Capital of India and the Outsourcing Capital of the world. The city almost gets in half the revenue generated by the IT and ITES industry. It is also the R&D capital of the country as it is home to quite a few research organizations like IISc, HAL, DRDO, ISRO, IT R&D, Biotech industry, Silk research and numerous other things. It also boasts of an IIM institute. It also happens to be the Biotech IT consulting capital of the country. The IT revolution here started in the mid-80’s when Sam Pitroda facilitated the setup of the first Technology park in the country, the TI campus. The city was supposed to be developed as the electronic capital of the country. From there the journey began and lot many first generation companies started to setup shop here. Infosys and Wipro seem to be one of the earliest to set their foot here apart from Texas instruments. By the late 90’s people started to realize the IT boom and thus Bangalore came into prominence. Early on Bangalore was a city of retired people with loads of gardens and water tanks in around it apart from being the capital of the state of Karnataka. It is spelt as Bengaluru in Kannada, but is more famously known as Bangalore in its anglicized form.
Bangalore was a sleepy city which suddenly woke up because of the IT boom but has been very very slow to react in terms of infrastructure related aspects. From a small population of about 17-18 lakh people in the mid-80’s it grew to 32-33 lakh in the early 90’s and has now reached close to 60 lakh people. The population of Bangalore pales in front of its bigger cousins like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkatta. The growth of Bangalore has been more of the educated class especially in their early 20’s. If one analyses the rate of growth of youngsters, Bangalore would be the leader by far. These youngsters are mainly fresh out of college with great deal of enthusisasm, energy and have a very high disposable income when compared to their counterparts in other cities. Apart from this they are the new globe trotting generation who has visited various countries even in their short careers so far. Youngsters from across the country visit the city in search of landing up a tech job. These software professionals with their high amount of disposable incomes have turned the economy of the city upside down. There would be about 5 to 6 lakh people in the IT arena and about 2-3 lakh in the BPO space. This population of about 10 lakh population must be generating atleast 10 lakh more people who basically are involved in servicing these people. Apart from these they would have about 10 lakh people as their family members. This basically amounts to half the people of Bangalore whose life is touched because of the Tech industry. Out of the remaining 30 lakhs a few people are in the government machinery, political organizations, construction industry, laborers’, NGOs, religious establishments, manufacturing industries and trader folks. Out of these also few people are still indirectly because of the IT industry. For example the people in construction industry, daily wage laborers’, municipality people and others. All in all the city is virtually dominated by the techies now.

The infrastructure of the city is literally in shambles. The city is mainly dominated by individual houses and not apartments. The latest growth also is a mixed bag. The construction quality of the apartments built here is also not that great. The individual houses that have been already built are from pre-90’s and the Bangalore Development authority (BDA) has also stopped developing and allotting plots after a decade and a half. The growth now again has shifted back to the private sector that are developing the lands with the help of BMRDA which is not that stringent and does not help much in creating the infrastructure. Its main role is to approve the projects legally. The individual houses tend to be very small in size as the common man could not afford bigger plots and hence had to maximize the best possible way out. The growth of the city has been mainly in the South and South east of the city. The only airport which Bangalore boasts of was mainly built to cater to the HAL test sorties and a few civil airlines. It is no more able to handle the pressure. A new airport has been sanctioned on the outskirts of the city towards Northern part of the city and the work on it has already started. It will be 2009 by the time which it starts functioning. The city is slowly and steadily shifting to that direction now. Going further on to the public transport and the road/rail network, Bangalore still does not boast of a Metro or local train kind of a infrastructure. A Metro rail has been sanctioned by the GoI a few weeks back but it is a bit late to start according to me. The city boasts of 8-10 main exits – Hosur Road, Bannerghetta Road, Kanakpura Road, Mysore Road, Magadi Road, Tumkur Road, Bellary/Hyderabad Road, Old Madras Road, Airport/Vartur Road and Sarjapur Road. Tumkur and Magadi Road are the main roads which are flanked by the Manufacturing industry at Yeshwantpur and Peenya. Mysore Road and Kanakapura Roads are mainly used to bring in the trading goods and for the people in the adjoining districts of Mysore and Mandya to stream in to the city. Hosur Road, Bellary Road and Old Madras Road were used for resources to stream in from the neighboring states. Now the situation has changed. Old Madras Road, Sarjapur Road and Hosur Road have been flanked by the Tech companies and the Bannerghetta Road, Kanakapura Road along with the 3 mentioned roads have become a haven for the IT junta to reside. The property prices in these places have grown manifold all of a sudden. The city had a Ring Road network on the lines of Delhi but has fallen under the great pressure put on them. They are just 2 + 2 lanes with no provision for a service lane and this very fally brings to the core of the traffic problems. The city over and above that did not possess even a single flyover prior to 2002. It’s only in the recent times that a few have them have become functional. The average speed on the roads, the only way of conveyance, is pathetically low and is around 15 Kms on an average across the whole city. The average speed should be close to 30-35 kms/hour. The city has embarked upon a task to de-congest the main roads. The various ways in which it is going about doing these is – Metro Rail project, Few more flyovers planned, peripheral ring road, elevated road from Silk Board to Electronic city on Hosur Road and the Mysore – Electronic City link road. The government is also encouraging the companies to shift to other locations in the city like ITPL and Devanahalli side by offering lands to the companies at a lower cost. But all of this is not slated to be ready before the second half of 2008. Let all Bangaloreans pray for early completion of all these projects. Till then GOD SAVE BANGALORE.

My Relation with JD Edwards

My relationship with JD Edwards started in the year 2003 when I was given a campus offer from Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Consulting India in my B-School and was assigned to the JD Edwards practice. I was given a formal training on JD Edwards there mainly in the Distribution arena. I had to wait for quite a few months to actually get into a JD Edwards project. In the mean-time I was involved in Software/Bids risk management from the teams set-up, some internal tool developments and was doing some global reporting under the COO. Finally I got a chance in HPCL project-Sewree, Mumbai. I made a modest beginning as a fresher there by making the Supplemental Database documentation, Converting PDF images to Word text documents, Version control exercise for P4210 and P4205, learning a bit on purchase and inventory modules and doing a few bug-fixes on the customized objects there, going through customization documents, Updating FDD’s and TDD’s and a bit on Role-based user manuals. After spending about 8-10 months, I was put onto the JK Paper project at Delhi wherein I started to blossom as a functional guy. As this being my first implementation project was groomed by my seniors in the first half and then later on started to take independent charge. After spending about 11 months was sent back to HPCL-Mumbai for 3 months where I consolidated my JD Edwards knowledge under the able hands of Sivaramakrishnan. I was at the peak of my JD Edwards career by the end of January 2006. I again had to go to JK Paper project for the last 2 months but this time in the plant at Jaykaypur, Rayagada, Orissa. It was also a good experience as I got a feel of quite a lot of messed up things and had the opportunity to work on the Weighbridge interface. Also got a chance to visit the plant and meet the actual end-users.

My first impression of JD Edwards was that it’s very good software. It has immense functionality and is easier to tweak when compared to its other peers. Its GUI interface is very good and pretty friendly. I was awestruck in the way any related data to a particular document or transaction screen can be reached. The entire data is very well organized and related in a pretty organized manner. The first time in my life I was exposed to such a huge amount of possible permutations and combinations in a business process and then to find that they still do not suffice the entire needs of everybody’s business needs. It made me FEEL (& not just read) the huge diversity in how businesses are run. Any packaged software is a graduation/PHD in its own right. It is always interesting as first you try to familiarize oneself with the various modules and then various end-to-end processes, navigation, transactions, fields, masters, tables, reports………….. This creates a basis for the beginner to start trying out the various possibilities and scenario’s.

Those were the Capgemini Days - The Other Half

In my 15 days stint in the JDE practice at Mumbai – 2 I met Ajay Agarwal (my N+1), RamKumar Iyer, Vinay Rayas, Abhishek Chauhan, N Sriram and Sridhar Iyer. After making a modest beginning at HPCL where I came across quite a few guys into the JDE practice. I came across Rajesh Dahale (my reporting boss and counsellor), Satish Kadam, Santosh Patil, Fauzan Patel, Mathew George, Nilesh Savant, Nilesh Rajadhyaksha, Anand Bais, Surendra Arora, Satish Kumar Joshi, Milind Bam, Sanjay Joshi, the great Chetan Sabunkar, Pramod Jaiswal, Sivaramakrishnan, Dinesh Kumar, Sandeep Shejwalkar, Narayan Prasad, Manoj Kumar and a couple of more guys. I also happened to meet all the big stalwarts of the HPCL project – Srini, Rajni Mehta, Surana, Nishi, KVS, Parihar and a few more. Thereafter I was sent to JK Paper Delhi and I knew most of the guys on the project. My project manager happened to be Dipanjan Banerjee. We were provided a guest house exclusively for the project team and we all stayed as a strongly bonded team for the next year or so. The team comprised of myself, Fauzan Patel, Ramkumar Iyer, Nilesh Savant, Abhishek Chauhan, N Sriram, Rajesh Agarwal, Raman Sibal and Satish Kadam. Ram Iyer and Rajesh Agarwal left us pretty soon and were replaced by Sridhar Iyer and Anish Agarwal. Naveen Gupta and Rajiv Mittal were also part of the project. We were briefly joined by the APS team of Dinesh Kumar, Ajay Agarwal, Satish Joshi and Pramod Jaiswal and their exit from the project was also pretty soon. Anil Sinha was our Change Manager on the project and was hardly visible onto the project. At the time of Go-Live we were split up into the HO and plant teams and were joined by Shankar Iyer, Vinod Bhat, Narayan Prasad and Vishwas Ghanekar around the Go-Live. We also had Aashish from IAL on the project. The JK Paper guys involved on the project were WTD, CFO, Kapoor, Subramanyam, KK Rustagi, Atul Agarwal, Bijoi, Saurabh Agarwal, Sanjeev, Prabal Mahapatro, Doctor sahab, Bose and Pragyan Mohanty. After Go-Live support of 1 month I was sent back onto the HPCL project wherein I was sent to assist the Purchase team in solving certain issues. I met Sanjay More, Paresh Hule, Hanumant, Nitin Kane (my N+1), Abhishek Pandya, Murali (My booze partner and a friend) and ofcourse Sivaramakrishnan. It was a great learning experience which I would treasure. I was sent back to Orissa on JK Paper project for 2 weeks and then all of a sudden was asked to continue on the project. I met a few more guys here – Suresh Kumar, Sudal Acharya and Nihar Padhi. Luckily for me the project ended pretty soon. After coming back to office in April 2006, I was shifted to the SAP practice and within a week or so was asked to move to Schneider-Electric India deployment project in Delhi. I was very reluctant to go there but had to eventually go there. My role here was of a PMO and I had replaced Niraj Ruparel(IIM-C) guy who had decided to move onto purely Management Consulting roles. The Project Manager here was Tushar Wahal who is pretty much a workaholic guy. I met some nice guys here like Jagdish Misra, Amit Panjwani, Manij Kumar, Manoj Bhoota, Ponnuraj, CS, Nitin Goel, Daljit Singh, Anil Tanwar, Dipak Dolas, Sudheendra Nyamati, Nilesh Edwankar, Aashish Shekher and Inderpal Singh. That was my project history in brief at Capgemini.

I started planning for my exit way back in November 2005 and finally got through by June 2006, a solid 6-7 months. Though the seriousness started to grip in only late March 2006 and by mid-May I had an offer with me. July 3rd 2006 happened to be my last working day in Capgemini-India and the CG saga for me came to an abrupt end.

Those were the Capgemini Days - Intitial Days

It's a very funny feeling when one quits an organisation after serving it for couple of years. I am facing a similar situation in my life right now. I worked for Capgemini Consulting India – Mumbai for 37 months and have recently joined Wipro Technologies Bangalore. I joined Capgemini (then called Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) after a campus selection and it being my first job (technically second) found it to be another “HOME”. I have been staying away from my family since the last ten years now and have made couple of places where I lived as my home away from home but the feeling here is a bit different. I guess leaving the first company always seems to be interesting for most of us, but it so happens that I am undergoing it right now. I still feel as though I have been sent on another assignment on behalf of Capgemini. I am still coming to terms with calling myself a Wiproiite and trying to adapt to the culture and lifestyle.

I met quite a few guys in Capgemini and enjoyed interacting with almost all of them. I remember joining Capgemini in June 2003 alongwith 3 Symbi guys and 10 IIT-SOM guys from Powai. The Symbi guys were Isaac Manuel, Jaidev Singh Rathore and Anuj Sharma. All the three of them quit before me. Isaac and Jaidev entered SAP and Anuj after getting his CA moved into the Financial Arena. The SOM guys were great guys too – Aseem Gaur, the 2 Saurabh's, Himabindu, Akhilesh Madhukar, Parag Jain, Yashasvi Venkatesh, Amit Khandelwal, R***** and one more who left pretty early. We were the famous 14 as we used to call ourselves. All of us joined on 16th June 2003 and were together for the next 45 days or so. We all underwent a training in JD Edwards and had a bench period wherein we used to be either be in the Canteen eating Bourbon n coffee and having big GD sessions on various topics or discussing about projects with whatever little knowledge we had on IT(MBA gyaan) or play network games in the corner cubicles (!!!! ????) of mezzanine floor or go for smoke breaks outside the Godrej campus and crib a lot. We used to go either in our bikes or Ashwin’s Ford (F1) or the Patel bhai’s Accent. We enjoyed couple of parties in CG and got a photograph clicked with the then CEO of CGE&Y India – Salil Parekh. Slowly we(the famous 14) all drifted into different roles and practices. I was involved in the meeting with Baru Rao (COO then) – famous six, wherein we were asked to find a project for ourselves or face some tough decisions. Scary isn’t it. We all somehow settled into some kind of roles in the organization.
After spending a couple of months on Risk Management, Internal Systems, Quality and some Reporting. I started into risk management alongwith Vikas Bhatia and was lateron joined by Anand Krishnamoorthy(Manager) and Sankar Vorapattur(Assoc. Dir). They were kind of my first bosses in Capgemini. I still remember those days when Isaac used to put in his best efforts to learn SAP and I made certain attempt too. Isaac got a job in SAP(IBM-Bangalore) and moved on. Jaidev was settled in an SAP project after having a 2 month stint in JDE. Anuj was somehow hanging on to Peoplesoft just to complete his CA. Saurabh got an offer from an MNC as a liaison person for their IT outsourcing in Bangalore and got married later on. Aseem, Madhukar and Saurabh Kumar got into SAP-PP/MM and hung on for a few months. The rest of the guys moved to IDEAX project or some other roles and then quit over a period of 7-8 months. In the meantime I moved on to JDE practice only after I put in my papers. After 15 days of recap was put onto the mother of all JDE projects in India – HPCL. I made a modest beginning as a fresher there.