I am back to India and I am back to my poor blog, who already forgot how I look like (or write like).
To start without any intro:
I got back here because I really loved the place, the people, the way I felt here when visited it in the first time. After my trip I became fascinated by everything I saw as a tourist, and decided that I must come back to see how the business world is in here.
After a short search of a "job of my dream" and a long almost 3 months waiting for my visa to come through, I landed in Bangalore last Friday! And soon after landing I went to the office of naseba, the company who chose to be my employer in India. It's an event management company, who call themselves a business information company, because they are not simply making events for other companies, but creating everything from the scratch in-house. To put it in simple words: if people from naseba see, let's say, "tourism in Lebanon" as a promising and rapidly growing area for investments, they make an event where they invite companies interested in investing into this area and developers, travel operators, airlines, etc. to meet each other and to find the points of common interest. So naseba in this case provides the platform for the two sides to meet and have a deal, therefore it provides the information from each side to another, thus business information title :)
To tell you a little more, the company has several offices across Europe, Middle East and Asia, Bangalore being the largest one, as it hosts some departments which are servicing events all over the network (not only in India). This includes CRO (client relations operations) department where I am gonna work, or in fact am already working. My role is pretty simple for the beginning: to take care of all the communication with the clients (sponsors, speakers, delegates) from the moment when the contract with them is signed, and to take care of them during the event; later on (after my first events) I will be also responsible for arranging of the venue, servicing companies, visa support, etc. The exciting part is that: 1. I get to travel to the events (not all the people working on the event travel there, in fact only 5 out of, say, 40), 2. The events are not in Bangalore. My first event in the end of Sept will be in Mumbai, then I might be allocated into the team working on any event from Egypt to Kuala Lumpur! 3. The profile of the delegates is always very high, there are only CXO as they are called here (X - being anything), so that's the right place to get to know how the business world and culture is in India :)
Apart from my job description, which I totally love, as it has proper part of working with computer, databases, emails, and working with people, plus travelling!, so apart from that, the people at naseba are just amazingly great on the first, and already second sight! I got some trainings from some of them on different topics, got to meet the General Manager, got to know my teammates and my direct manager, and I fell in love with all of them! They are very positive, helpful, to the point, work-oriented, smart, everything together! I have very good impression of them!
Well, what else to tell you... The office has over 100 people, all of them are indians. My working hours are from 10.30 to 19.30 with an hour break for lunch. The lunch is served on the top of the building by a boy who brings home-made food. One meal costs 20 Rs, which is like 50 cents. I got a laptop, thinking if I'll get a blackberry too, as a lot of people in my office have it :)
Finishing on this topic, I am really happy that the main thing I came here for - the job - is indeed up to my expectations! It would have been really disappointing, if it wasn't so, right? :)
Stay tuned, as my next post will be about the accommodation hunt (much more tragic topic)!
