René Seifert – Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

After a quality-wise mixed LeWeb-conference in Paris last week (pictures here) which is close to to revive the diplomatic American-French rift and a brief intermediary stop in Munich, I arrived in India on early Sunday morning with my good friend and business partner Dirk Schornstein. Actually, the flight LH 754 from Frankfurt to Bangalore added those few missing miles to become a Lufthansa HON-Circle.

607,771 miles in 2 years, uffz, so I kind of deserve it for spending half of my life on a plane :-)

Bangalore at this time of the year has it's coldest season of the year where I almost feel like a sissy wearing a pyjama during the night in South India, but it's just these 14° C during the night which make it slightly chilly.

It's Dirk's first time to India and for me it's almost a bit of re-discovery through his "virgin eyes" for this country which with tomorrow's date exactly for 5 years has become the centre for my little universe. Dirk is doing very well, with learning fast how to cross a street alive by running like a headless chicken (Quoting his last tweet: "Crossing streets is like playing Frogger. Difference: only 1 life. #india #traffic") and eating spicy food with his hands.

We are here half-business, half-fun, later the day we'll attend the TIE Summit with the most impressive entrepreneurs from various industries in India. For the fun part we'll have two journeys. The first starting tomorrow by flying to Coimbatore, taking the toy-train to Ooty, spending two nights in the Mudulamai National Park and driving back to Bangalore with a stop-over in Mysore. The second trip from next Monday to Goa over Christmas and one night in Bombay.

After the terrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai three weeks ago, I was very carefully assessing the situation. In terms of risk I had identified three possible scenarios: Another attack, either by the same group or some other who wants to take a "free ride" in an anyway tense situation, a clash between Hindus and Muslims like it had happened in 1993 already and rising military temperature between India and Pakistan. The latter is becoming increasingly unlikely thanks to India's prudent reaction to Pakistan which has to be considered a failed state in all the harshness of the expression. Or as Shashi Tharoor put in in the current print edition of the Time Magazine: "India is a state with an army, Pakistan is an army with a state." 

If there is anything of a good in all the evil which has been done, it is the fact the honest hard-working Indians from the middle and upper class are waking up, saying "enough is enough" to it's incapable political leadership and reclaiming democracy from those who have corrupted it. A good read on the "State of the Union" is the country-special in the current "The Economist" where it for instance says about India's progress in the abysmal infrastructure everywhere: "But India will not meet its target; it never does."

Still, the subcontinent is always full of surprises and nothing would be further from reality than writing India off. Dirk and I will have a good time in the next days and weeks for sure. If you want to follow our trip, here we are:

• My Twitter Account
• Dirk's Twitter-Account
• Picture-Set on Flickr

Finally, to end this post with something extremely, tremendously funny, a music video from a Bollywood dance-scene which is even by Indian standards on the rather "extreme" side of the scale by itself. What makes it, however, completely OTT (=over the top) are its "subtitles" which are "explaining" what is being sung. Check this out, because at the end of the day we are all "Benny Lava" :-)