Project krushi, An initiative by Association Saikorian

Project krushi was established back in1994 by Association Saikorian, Alumni of Sainik School Korukonda; Association Saikorian is a charitable not-for profit organization located in Hyderabad, India. There are many members live in India and across the Globe. Dr. Rao, a BSU professor who was with us on this trip is an active member of this great organization, who has also donated so much money for an upcoming project that will take a place in another chapter of this organization.
The purpose of this organization is to foster boys who are orphans or came from poor families that can’t afford to send their boys to school. They actually send people around the city to look for homeless boys who left their parents house and do not know anything about their families, so they bring them in and treat them as they are their own children. Their ideology is to help the child to realize his full potential for his all round development, and to treat every child as their own child. They emphasize on their education and they make sure that every child leaves with a career in his hand.
This trip was an amazing trip that we will always remember for the rest of our lives because it was very unique and sacred. Also, we had the chance to talk with the kids who made us feel like we were their own parents. Also, the kids prepared a lunch and sat down and ate with us.

SIMB Bangalore, India. Birthplace of business leaders

SIBM, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, established in 1978; however, SIBM-Bangalore has been established since 2009, located in Electronics city, the heart of the Silicon valley of India.. At SIBM Bangalore students are carefully picked, each year there are more than 100,000 applicants but only few hundred are accepted. The Master of Business Administration (MBA) Program at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management Bangalore is a 2 year program that offers a blend of theory and practice to help students to equip themselves with the capability to handle current business situations and take the relevant business decisions.The first year of MBA Program teahes students the foundation in the areas of Management such as economics, accounting, marketing, finance, HR and others. At the end of the first year, the students are required to undergo a Summer Internship Project for 8 weeks. The second year covers specializations & electives offered in the areas of finance, marketing, operations and Human Resources Management. There are one thing that I thought was interesting in our visit that they have a dorm only for boys and no girls are allowed and also the same thing is for girls.

Our visit to Grundfos India

Grundfos, Demand Driven Distribution

Grundfos India was established in March 1998. Today Grundfos has 21 offices throughout India and more than 100 distributors across the country. Grundfos India is part of Grundfos which is one of the world’s leading pump manufacturers, with more than 16 000 employees and an annual production of more than 16 million pump units a year. They produce Circulator pumps for heating and air-conditioning counting for almost 50% of the world circulator pumps. They also produce water supply pumps, waste water pumps and other industrial pumps.
According to their spokesman, almost every large building, hotel, hospital around the world uses their pumping system. Grundfos has built the first green building in India. Green Building is a building that uses energy, water and other resources efficiently; also, it reduces waste, pollution, and it protects the health of its occupant.

Our MICROLAND visit, Bangalore, India

MICROLAND, India

Microland has incorporated in 1989 in Bangalore, India; they have more than 2500 young, skilled and motivated employees that work 24/7 to meet their clients’ needs. Microland is a pioneer of the remote infrastructure management concept and a leading specialist IT infrastructure services provider in India with clients in USA, UK and Middle East. They have strategic partnerships with technology leaders such as Avaya, ChangeBASE AOK, Cisco, Microsoft, Sybase, Symantec and VMware.
Microland's goal is to optimize their client’s server infrastructure, reduce overall costs and increase its performance. Their management services are designed to address an enterprise's entire server platform needs from design, deployment to optimization.
Also, as cloud computing services are getting more and more important in today's technology Microland offers their clients true enterprise class service over cloud delivery platforms to meet their clients business needs.

Our visit to Celebrity Fashions, Chennai, India

Celebrity Fashions is one of India’s expert garment exporters that manufacture many name brand products such as Timberland, GAP, Armani Jeans, The north face, Nautica and many more. Celebrity Fashions is number one trousers manufacture in India. Also it has its own national premier menswear brand, Indian Terrain.
We walked around the facilities and saw how they actually inspect the raw material before they start cutting it; they make sure it meets their standards otherwise they’ll send it back to the supplier. It was fascinating the way they cut the clothes, they cut hundreds of shirts at the same time and they label each part so they can easily sew it. After they finish sewing the shirts they wash it and dry it, then they put it through a special machine that blow the lint off. Finally they press it and package it in a special way so that they can fit a lot more shirts in a box.

Our visit to Infosys

Infosys Technologies Ltd is one of the biggest names in the Indian IT industry. It offers many services such as IT services, engineering services, consulting services, BPO services, and finacle solution for banking industry. This multinational IT services company with offices in 22 countries and development centers in India, Japan, China, Australia, UK and Canada, is headquartered in Bangalore, India. Infosys has close to 125,000 employees. Infosys Technologies Ltd. has come up a long way to become a global leader with revenues of more than US$ 4 billion.
Seven people have started this company back in1981 as a software development company, called "Infosys Consultants Pvt. Ltd.", with a capital of only US$250. In 1993 Infosys has become a public company and changed the name to Infosys Technologies Ltd. Infosys Technologies Ltd. was also the only Indian company to win the prestigious Global MAKE award for the three consecutive years in 2003, 2004 and 2005. In 2009 Infosys was rated amongst the "50 Most Innovative Companies" by Business Week.

Fireflies ashram, Dinnepalya village, India

Fireflies is a fabulous place that is located in Dinnepalya village right outside of Bangalore; it is so quiet and peaceful place that draws many people from all over the world. It is surrounded by trees and overlooks a beautiful lake. It has a meditation hall, conference hall, amphitheatre, dining room, library, and a yoga and massage centre. We went around the village and checked out the small stores and the old houses; also found many ant hills that are humongous. We had a great time there; it was actually the best place that we stayed in during our entire trip in India. The only drawback was the slow Internet connection that drove us nuts. It was so difficult to get online to check our e-mails. However, the people at the fireflies are very nice and open minded, they acknowledge and learn from many religions such as Buddha, Kabir, Christ, Basava, Mahatma Gandhi, Ramana Maharishi, Krishnamurthi. They believe that no religious teaching should be the property of any single community, but belong to any seeker who can draw meaning from it. They also believe that the sacred and the secular have to meet in order to solve the serious personal, social and environmental problems facing humanity today.

The long journey to Bangalore

Sunday, January 2, 2011
My thirty hours of traveling started at 7 am, Sunday, January 2, 2011, when my wife and I left the house and headed to Bridgewater state university to meet our group members and Dr. Grossman and start our journey to India. We took our university’s van to Newark airport, New Jersey. It took us about five hours to get there since we had to go back to Quincy, MA to pick up an important travel document for one of our group member that she forgot at home. Luckily, we got to the airport just in time; our flight departed from Newark at 4:25 pm Sunday afternoon to arrive the next day at 5:35 pm local time at Bombay airport. After we got our luggage and went through the customs we had to go to a domestic airport to take another flight to Bangalore which took us approximately another five hours to get there. At the airport we met Dr. Rao and two drivers who took us to the fireflies ashram which it was about an hour away from the airport where we stayed for five days.