Around Hyderabad in 4 hrs...

While returning from Jeddah on 25th Oct I did not get any Mumbai flight so I had to board on a Hyderabad flight since I was too eager to be at home. So I preferred make an additional trip from Hyderabad to Mumbai instead of waiting for Mumbai flight that was after 2 days. This was going to be my first visit to Hyderabad

As usual the flight was a bit delayed and landed in Hyderabad at 10 30 instead of 9 00... This made me miss the 10 30 flight (which was a remote possibility)... I checked with other airlines counters but no immediate flight... next flight was Indian airlines at 16 00... I booked ticket...

Now i had a million dollar question... what to do for 4 hrs till I check in for Mumbai flight at 15 00? I thought of checking into a hotel and spend some time watching TV etc...So I booked a prepaid auto and headed for a nearby hotel the auto driver knew... but he rates were very high... we checked all nearby hotels but it was all the same...and I was not ready for paying 600-700 rs for a 4 hrs stay.

So i struck a deal with the auto driver... anyway I was to spend 300-400 rs even if i had gone for heaper hotels.. So I asked the autowala to take me around the city…and show some landmarks as well as the marketplace and all for 400 rs.

After i enjoyed the famous Hyderaabadi chicken biryani...We managed to visit a few places like the famous Char Minar.... some lake with a Buddha statue in the middle.... also I visited the Birla temple... and finally we made a trip to high tech city after spending some time just roaming around the city central areas and all...

It was clearly evident that Chandrababu had done a lot for this city... at least the areas that i went around had all good infrastructure of roads flyovers and all...also before landing i could see that the city had a fair presence of greenery. I could not hold from comparing this with the crumbling infrastructure of Bangalore... as well as worst infrastructure of Pune.

I felt really bad when i saw the Char Minar... When we think of Hyderabad the first image that comes into mind is of the Char Minar like we think of Gateway of India for Mumbai or say Red Fort or India Gate for Delhi... but all these monuments are taken care of very well but this char Minar was a sad exception...

Too many names carved on the walls all over....the steps that lead upstairs as well as all the corners were red...testifying the "Paan" culture and the interesting part was that they were charging 100 rs per head for foreign nationals to visit this monument...

The typical south Indian tradition of "Vyakti pooja" was also evident in the form of a lot of statues scattered all over the city...Hyderabad is a Muslim dominated city... and this being the month of Ramadan.. i was expecting a special look for the city like we generally observer in Diwali or Dashera in other cities , but to my surprise there was no such thing...city had no festive looks....

After roaming around till 3 pm I came back to the airport only to hear that the flight is delayed by an hour… but those 4 hours spent had given me a good idea about the city and it’s culture…

Call from ICICI

Some days ago I received a call from ICICI. It was about some Cash loans schemes. the usual telemarketing stuff… I really enjoy talking to these call center and Tele Marketing people and troubling them with a lot of questions.

The same thing I did here to :-) for about 20-25 minutes, I was asking questions about
Everything... from the amount... interest rate then.. The documents and all...
In short it was something which one of my colleagues termed as ragging on phone after it was over.

After this episode we went to canteen. After some time, to my surprise….the phone rang again... it was same number... same gal...

She had called me back to say thanks... apparently what all I did was a welcome change for her from the routine job wherein most of the people don't even listen to fully and just put the phone down. I took the opportunity to ask a few more questions to find out the nature of job and other info about the way these services operate.

Next day...she called again. This time it was for chatting only ;-) we talked for about 10-15 minutes. Again in the evening also she called. I managed to gather a good deal of info about her profession and it clearly gave the idea of the cut throat competition these companies face.

She was working in an environment where salary was highly dependent on the performance. A very small base salary and everything above the basic salary was dependent on how many customers they bring in for the bank through telemarketing. You bring in 10 customers and you get a salary of about 4000. Here too control and monitoring was very strict. I got the glimpse of it very next day.

On the third day I received a call from the same service. This time someone else was on phone. As usual they started telling the usual stuff about the scheme and all and the direct questions about my employment. It was clear that they were expecting a customer interested in loans. But in response I asked, "What is a flat interest rate?”. Then without a single word, phone was slammed down.

Then I suddenly realized, the four calls made to same number had brought the number under scanner and they were checking it out. This must have put the poor gal in trouble.

For me this entire episode highlights the fierce competition the Indian banks are facing as well as the new service industry that is thriving on of this competition because they provide cheap services like this one.

And most importantly a new Indian business culture where your progress is mainly dependent on your performance...a major shift from the concept of "sarkari noukari..."