Tag Archives: Chennai

Day 9: Last day in Chennai

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Unfortunately we had to cancel our factory visit of Royal Enfield. A remarkable producer of motorbikes in India, all their bikes are all handmade and are recognized as one of the finest in the nation. Canceling this visit had freed up our schedule, allowing us to do individual sightseeing trips, special massage treatments or simply just to sleep a little bit longer.

McDelivery

Individual sightseeing tours gave everybody the opportunity to explore the city by themselves.

We all gathered in the hotel lobby at 13:00, fully packed with our entire luggage we were all set to leave this vibrant city of Chennai. But before leaving we decided to have lunch in this City one last time. Honestly, who likes to travel with an empty stomach?
Our guide Kannan lead us to a very popular restaurant called fusion9. It is rumored that reservations have to be taken early in advance in order to get a table in this super fancy restaurant. But thanks to Kannan, who has managed that we would get a table for 20, we were able to experience an exceptional Indian cuisine one more time. After all, time flew by and we headed to the airport for our evening flight to New Dehli.

After arrival at Dehli international airport, a bus drove us to the nearby hotel. We will stay at this hotel for the next 4 days.

Day 8: Chennai – Visiting Cognizant Academy

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Address exchange

Group photo

Those who found the time and leisure to attend the morning joga had to be ready on 6 o’clock in the morning.

Everybody was on time for the departure to Cognizant Chennai on 08:15, but this time it was one of our bus drivers who was 15 minutes late. The weather however was becoming brighter but in our case that wasn’t that positive. The sweat run already when we were waiting for our delayed chauffeur.

After the 90 minutes bus ride through Chennais heavy rush-hour traffic and after receiving the visitors-badge at the security desk, we were warmly welcomed by a waiting class of Cognizant Academy students. The students were seated in an order that we had to split up and sit between them. First we were a little confused and unhappy, but the attitude of these friendly and open people once more changed our minds. Some words about the Cognizant Academy. This Cognizant-internal education system covers four different but related parts:
– a basic program targeted to get university graduates business-ready with the basic needs for cognizant
– a big advanced training section
– an individual “career compass”, aiming to help people to get a customized career perspective
– a leadership development program

After learning this, it now made perfect sense that we were sitting with a class of this academy in the same room. To better getting to know each other, we were supposed to play a funny game and develop as well as perform a short presentation in smaller groups. The atmosphere was both relaxing and funny. In these smaller groups, we also visited some other classes in their rooms, asking them about their lives as students of the Cognizant Academy. In one of these class-visits the ambiance became that good, that the Indian students told us to dance. After showing us some basic Indian-style dance moves, we indeed tried to imitate them. Our audience had really a nice time. As a reward, a male student sang a little Indian song and a female student danced really nice moves.

After dining we heard again some words about off-shoring and outsourcing. The hospitality of our hosts and the ongoing talks at the end made it hard to leave. However, after a group-photo outside it was time to say good bye. Or: Cu on FB.

By Kristian Bubalo, Dario Cocchi, Simon Guldener

Day 7: Chennai – sight-seeing

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Government Museum Chennai


MGR Memorial

Marina Beach

After waking up in the fabulous Marriott Hotel, sight-seeing was scheduled. The few steps between the hotel entrance and the waiting bus were enough to predict: It’s gonna be a terribly hot day!
First object to see was the Government Museum Chennai where we lionised lots of historic sculptures of Vishnu, Ganesh, Shiwa (not Mike), Buddha and his other friends. These sculptures were not as old as they seemed to be, some were “just” around 200 years. However, some were really amazing detailed elaborated. The zoological section showed all kinds of animals found in India, a few foreign species could be seen as well. Because the rooms of the museum were not cooled, everybody was glad to re-enter the bus, although we saw only few of the generally interesting museum.

The short visit in a park near the sea with the MGR Memorial and the Anna Memorial caused everybody to sweat, some only little, others a little more. It was quite muggy and hot, around 33°. Our last stop before lunch was at the “International Schrein of St. Thomas Basilica” where a mass was just in progress. The drive to the place where we were supposed to have lunch lead us through some lively streets. Tons of people, hectic traffic, markets, beggars and even artists could be seen.

After a typical Indian buffet and some moments of rest, our two buses carried us to marina beach, a part of the remarkable wide beach of Chennai. On our way along the sea to get to marina beach we saw empty parts of beach, fishermen maintaining their nets and finally the well populated area of marina beach. The 250 meters from the street to the sea were characterised by Indian children, as well as adults, extensively watching us. As swimming was prohibited, we soon went back to the buses.
The heat and moisture was heavy for us to take and we all were quite idle and powerless. Back in the hotel at 16:30 most went in their rooms, some went to the gymnastics-room and few took a massage.

By Kristian Bubalo, Dario Cocchi, Simon Guldener

Day 6: Sightseeing in Hyderabad and flight to Chennai

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After a very good dinner and an exiting night out (at least for some of the guys), the day started an hour later than usual. Giving us a chance to rest a little bit longer, we met at 9 at the hotel entrance and headed to a shopping mall in Hyderabad. It took us about 30min to get to the “Hypermall” located at the outskirts of the city, only to find out that they open at 11 o’clock. So we decided to visit a special market known for its unique handcrafted art items, such as wooden sculptures, pearls or luxurious pashmina shawls. After driving another 30min, we found out that this market has moved to another location. However, we decided to go back to the shopping mall as we were running out of time.

On arrival we have split up and moved on to an individual shopping trip. The mall consists of more than 50 shops and was beautifully decorated.  Although the “Sale” season was still on the prices were moderate.

We met at 14:00 at our usual restaurant within the Savory hotel. The hotel has just been opened and therefore it was still unknown to the locals, causing the rickshaw ride to be an adventure, once again.

The lunch was very good, truly one of the best restaurants in Hyderabad! We headed back to our hotel afterwards to pack our luggage and to check out. After loading our baggage on the bus, we shared some of our Swiss Chocolate with the local kids and a few workers from the construction site next to our hotel.

Mr. Boev from his social side

As we headed to the airport, the bus took us through various beautiful sceneries with lots of green vegetation and impressive rock structures, a pleasant chance of scenery in a very urban trip so far.

A spectacular view on Chennai’s skyline was revealed as we approached the airport. Later after we loaded our baggage on the bus, the driver took us to the Marriot hotel where we had dinner and a few good drinks.

Center for BIT goes India 2011

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This summer the Center for Business Information Management organizes a study trip to India in cooperation with Cognizant Technology Solutions. During the period between the 17th and the 30th of July the class BIT09a will visit the 4 famous outsourcing destinations Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and New Delhi. Cognizant is going to open their doors in every city to give a deep insight into their daily business. Beside visiting companies there will be plenty of sightseeing and also a sight behind the curtain of a unique India culture. We’re sure it will be an impressive experience for the students and also for the organizers.

We’d like to take the opportunity to express our gratefulness for the support given by Cognizant. Without Cognizant it wouldn’t have been possible.

We hope we’ll have an interesting study trip without any accidents. Stay up to date and follow the students on this blog!

The following places will be visited:

[mappress]

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About Cognizant:

Cognizant

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 112,500 employees as of May 1, 2011, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.