It was a dense, intense and allover great trip, clearly business but including the best what India has to offer for the sightseeing part. We arrived in Delhi on Saturday morning directly after a convenient 7 hours flight straight from Munich. “We” in this case were Stephan Roppel who is in charge for corporate strategy at the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck and Andreas von Buchwaldt, Partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants and myself.
Somehow I thought I’ll make a close real-time photo documentation out of the whole trip. See the entire set here on my Flickr account.
Sunday we headed toward the most beutiful building which all of us three had ever seen. The Taj Mahal in Agra. Monday we had meetings in Delhi, where Tobias Schulz-Isenbeck joined who is the Head of M&A at Holtzbrinck, here on the pic with Ravi Singh, CEO of Macmillan Publishing Services.
Tuesday in my favourite Indian city Bombay (Mumbai) at the Arabian Sea.
See us here departing early in the morning from unparalled beautiful Taj Mahal Hotel directly at the Gateway of India.
Wednesday and Thursday, we had further appointsments and good discussions in Bangalore. In the evening on Wednesday, before Tobias had to leave for Germany, I took him around MG Road and here on Brigade Road, the “5th Avenue of Bangalore”:
(I can assure that he was the only one with a tie during our walk :-) Obviously, I have a hard time substantially discussing here what the trip was about. What I can say is that Holtzbrinck, although deliberately quite unknown by its brand, holds significant stakes in publishing companies around the world and is already through Macmillan, hence Macmillan India employing 3,000 plus people, strongly established in this great country on the subcontinent. And the opportunities seem extremly exciting, given the current market dynamics. I will be more than happy to share more in case things have materialized here on my blog some weeks and months ahead.
One funny thing to mention, related to group dynamics when three to four guys hang out so closely knit on such a trip: We started giving each other alias names and we started to address each other like that. And it goes like that: Stephan’s pseudonym has been for some time already “First Admiral” (=”Großadmiral”), Andreas von Buchwaldt was “The Baron”, Tobias Schulz-Isenbeck became “The Senator” and myself war “The Sir”. Silly, isn’t it, was 40 degrees of heat do to your brain … :-)
Yesterday night, I went with Stephan for farewell to “Tuscsan Verge”, on daytime a boutique and at nighttime a club with Thursdays the “Hip Hop”-event where all the Bangalore gangsta rappers hang around. Hence, on the last day of the trip we finally found where we belong. See here “German Brainpower in da House”:
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Stephan looks sheepishly distinguished not to mention aloof amongst the beer bottled thugs :-)
where were all the drunken girls? ah Rene’s missing :-)
well documented “Sir”
There was no woman in the da house? Funny how you only see men gangster rapping in India;-)
You know what? You said you are a Simple guy etc etc. You are really “The sir”…:-)
Awesome pics and such a great post, as usual. :) I’ve never been to this hip-hop club (looks very interesting, but a bit scary.
-jen
update already will ya?:-)