On Tuesday morning we managed to be on time. Our bus had one hour for the 8 km ride to Cognizant’s headquarter in Bangalore. We received personal “visitor batches” with pictures of each individual and headed towards the 8th floor where we got placed in an oval meeting room already provided with different soft drinks, nuts and cookies.
The presentation gave us a good insight into the whole outsourcing industry and services offered by Cognizant. In addition they showcased how they add value to customers. In our opinion, it gave us a better insight than the presentation from SAP. Very fascinating was that a ‘Chai Walla’ brought us tea. This expression stands for someone who delivers tea during a meeting or office hours. You might know it from the movie called ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. This was the first time we experienced something like that but it seems to be a common job in big companies.
Unfortunately we received for lunch some American style pizzas from Domino’s delivery service instead of typical Indian food, which we have expected. But this might be because we first have had to get used to the spicy Indian food. By the way they eat spicy food for breakfast, too!
After the interesting speech we took some photos within the Cognizant building. Actually this was against regulations but as the vice president allowed it, we took some more shots to remember this awesome and especially exciting day. As appreciation we gave the speaker team, CH Murali and Shrikant, some Swiss chocolate and original “Swiss Army Knives”.
In the evening after dinner, nearly all of our class attended small house party at Raj Comforts. There we have had an own living room. We drank some drinks, mainly beer and some non-alcoholic ones. This party was going on until 4 o’clock in the morning. Imagine how sleepy some of us were at the day after.