Day 4
After a few days of adjusting to the time change and sightseeing, it was time for our first corporate visits. Due to privacy, I can't name the companies on this blog but I will do my best to explain what they each do. The first company we visited was a software development company that also provides R&D tech services for various businesses. The company was founded in 1991 in the Silicon Valley with offices across the United States and development centers in San Jose, CA and Noida (where we visited), Indore, and Bangalore. Clients are from a variety of industries including financial services, healthcare, and telecommunications. The building was in what seemed like a poor area, so I was surprised at how modern and westernized the office was inside. One of the ladies I spoke to a lot while we walked through the building works in the HR department. I was interested to learn that much of their employee benefits resemble what many "trendy" U.S. companies aim to provide. They have an extremely strong focus on their employees as they are the key strength of the company. Their facilities within the building include a daycare, a "chill-out" zone, a game room, a gym, and a library to allow employees to take breaks throughout the day.
The second corporate visit of the day fell through but we were lucky enough to get in touch with another nearby company last minute. The focus of this outsourced company is to work with U.S. clients in the healthcare industry (both providers and payers) by reducing costs and the quality of back-office operations. Some of their products and services include medical coding and audits, billing, patient assistance, insurance verifications, claims pricing and adjustments, and enrollment support. They work with hospitals and other medical centers to essentially manage their medical documents and revenue recovery programs. We had a panel type discussion with their CEO and a few other top employees who know more about the U.S. healthcare system than most Americans. Compared to the first more westernized company visit, this second company was much more of what I expected offices in India to look like--with smaller desk space and rows of employees typing away on their computers.
Following these visits, we stopped at a market to do some shopping. Being the capital of India, there are armed guards all over the place--they literally stood in front of every store at this market to open doors and monitor everything going on. While it's strange to see so many guards carrying huge machine guns on their back, in a way it's comforting to know that they have strong security and are looking out for everyone. This market--like most in India--was congested with people, rickshaws, scooters, and vendors. After a busy day, it was almost too exhausting to shop around the area.
Our professor, Dr. Adya, is originally from India and her parents, younger sister, and brother-in-law still live in Delhi. After shopping, we went to their home for dinner. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. I loved seeing what a traditional Indian home was like. Me and the other girls in the group spent a lot of time going through Dr. Adya's wedding albums while she explained all the details of an Indian wedding. Her sister brought out her own wedding dress and before I knew it, I was trying it on myself. The dress was beautiful and I was surprised that the gold details made it so heavy--I can't imagine wearing it for an entire ceremony!
After learning about Indian weddings, I naturally I had to do some research on my own. I came across the video below that shows a recent Hindu wedding in the U.S. mixed with a Sri Lankan ceremony for the groom. I'm starting to think I need to become friends with more Indians so that I can go to a wedding like this someday...
Day 5
The next day we drove around Delhi to see some of their government buildings from the bus. The main sight--which was my favorite of the trip--was the Akshardham Temple. This temple is the largest Hindu temple in India and the details both inside, outside, and surrounding it were absolutely breathtaking. Our tour guide here let us roam around on our own and I was lucky enough to walk through the monument with Dr. Adya (who we all think is a walking encyclopedia on India) and she explained various details about Hinduism. Unfortunately, because of extremely tight security, we were not allowed to bring cameras into the temple or surrounding area so the pictures and video (which don't do it justice) are from the temple's main website.
After walking around the temple, we stopped at a modern shopping mall for lunch and then headed to the airport to fly to Mumbai.
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