Inside the mind and heart of Venkatesh Sridhar

Here is the update of the day I turned 23. Sandy and Giri called me. Amresh called me from the US, we had a generic chat. Tarak gave me a call the night before and also called me up on the afternoon.

Yes, the Black Forest cake did arrive and 1/4th of it managed to land up on my face and hair. I will post the pics of the same soon.

Swathi sent me the best birthday card I have ever got, its too cool and it plays a song when you open it. Thanks a lot Swathi She also send me a pair of hankies with my name etched on them, cool na?

My grandparents sent me egreetings and it was very cute and full of love, affection and blessings.

I do not know if I am missing anything more, but still when I look back it is still a birthday that I had to spend alone and it is kind of getting to me…… grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Well, I am now 23. Damn, time just seems to fly and I seem to be getting old, not just agewise but on the mental aspect of myself. It’s my first birthday in a ‘corporate’ setting. Thankfully, there are no balloons or the decorative paper put over my work desk signifying that it’s my birthday. I do not know why but I am still uncomfortable being in the limelight. I guess I will improve with age, after all I need to get used to the same soon.

But, I guess I got the best birthday gift from my boss J Kalyanaraman, when he finally told me the roles and responsibilities. I am now going to be part of the M&A team, I will be rolling out the Internal Branding strategy. So, it’s a more general management kinda role which is what I prefer. I do not want to be stuck in a department and doing a routine thing.

The Senior Management Trainee program in HCL has been a mixed bag so far but it deserves a blog, that I will write about it soon (ya I know, I have not been blogging but birthday resolution is that I will constantly update my blog).

This is the 3rd consecutive year that I have not celebrated my birthday in Mumbai. I miss my best friends Sandy, Giri and Amru. (btw, the fuckers havent called or smsed till now … grrrrrrrr, but they are still my best friends :D). You know it is damn tough to celebrate your birthday alone and emotionally leaves you distraught as a birthday is damn special, a day which is your day and your’s alone. You are the sole star on that day and when you have to celebrated it alone it hurts more. Now, that’s about my life in Noida about which I will blog about later.

P.S: While, I was typing out the blog, the entire office came to know it is my birthday and the reception called and asked me what kind of cake do you want? I have ordered an eggless black forest cake to be neutral towards veggies and non veggies. It is going to be tough preventing the cake from being splattered all over my face and hair. Damn, I should have gone with an egg cake atleast my hair would have got some well deserved and needed conditioning .

It has been so long since I have blogged, was busy gearing up for my first real job with HCL Technologies Ltd.,as a Senior Management Trainee. It is an unique program which consists of those who went to the Tier 1 B Schools in India. We are a special cadre of Management Trainee’s being groomed to go on to head the various functions in HCL and its affiliates.

One amazing thing I have learnt about this company is its unique culture and the way that this company has been making history in the world arena and not just the domestic arena. HCL built a PC model around the same time Apple gave birth to the PC industry and a good 3 years before IBM came out with its PC. We have been an engineering company and we are doing some of the cutting edge technological work which other Indian companies are not doing especially the service oriented companies like Infy and TCS. The only company we can compare to is Wipro as they also have a hardware business, dont know much about their business anyways. And we have pioneered a lot of firsts in India. Another wonderful thing in this company is this wonderful entrepreneurial culture that we have managed to create and sustain and over 100 CEOs have emerged from our organization.

During the induction program, we were told about the various Lines of Business (LOB), Verticals and Horizontals. I would be the first one to admit that there was a massive influx of knowledge into us and then we were given a case study in which we had to prepare a pitch and sell it to the jury. Me and my group made some elimentary mistakes and it cost us. I will be going to HCL Comnet, which is their infrastructure business in the area of Project Management or Delivery as is the term used within HCL.

I am looking to forward to start working soon.

Ya guys me back in Mumbai. You know it’s an ironic thing that you till the month of August 2005 I always waited for that day when I would finish the damn course and come back home for good.. but now it feels….different. You know I wanted to stay there primarily coz Swathi is there.

I know its been 2 months and 3 days since I last posted. My apologies, was busy getting placed, then busy coming here, busy with Swathi. Came here and was too damn lazy to do anything except come online and chat with Swathi.

So, guys I am not going to delay anymore and tell you guys that I have been placed in HCL Technologies Ltd. as a Senior Management Trainee. So, thats one tension out of the way, I mean, I guess Union Bank of India might also be relieved, now it looks like their loan is more or less secure.

Well, I am going to sit down and blog more often now. Have load to write about. Actually, would hav blogged more but been outta the habit. Need to get back. See you soon, folks!! till then take care, have fun and God bless.

Hi guys,
It’s been exactly 30 days since I last posted. I am sorry for being irregular on the blog, but kya kare no time these days with placements round the corner. Had been to India recently… Went to S P Jain’s Insitute of Management and Research’s (SPJIMR) BhavITva 2006. The theme was Who is the next big IT customer?One thing that hit me was the theme meant that we had to peek at the future and see possible areas of revenue which the IT industry could look at, but found nothing of that sort here. They were still looking at Offshore, Retail and the usual clients. There was no mention about the rise and rise of the Indian Animation Industry, which will grow by about 30% each year over the next three years (I read it somewhere in the report – do not remember where), there was no mention about developing products in India. Absolutely nothing at all. I think the topics could have been chosen in a much more efficient manner.

Then, the placement fever started and it has been a very fast month. It just seems like yesterday was January 1st, 2006. I as usual in my hurry to apply, applied to a particular organization which I later on realised was not a great one. So, let’s see what happens on that front.

Now, you might wonder why the hell did Venky put the title as Waiting for January 31st, well the reason I have been waiting for it for almost 2 weeks now. I will list why:

1) Swathi will be back and it is going to be great to be in Knowledge Village after that. I really enjoy her company, she is way too good. Would have written more, but she is the one who doesn’t like the spotlight being on her. Plus, Swathi is getting my university convocation certificate, so here is wishing that she brings good luck for me in the placements.

2) J P Morgan is coming on campus. Right now I have no more details. We are having a Pre Placement Talk (PPT) tommorrow at 12.30 pm Dubai time which means it would be 2.00 PM IST. I hope that the job is good and most importantly, the pay packet is good too.

Pray for me guys and hope that I get a good placement in a good company with a good salary. (Note: Good is the minimum, you can pray for the very good, very very good, great and wonderful too :-) )

So, as you see waiting for January 31st to come. It’s going to be a big day folks, a very big day.

I am now back in Dubai. Back to those same LC’s, the same quizzes, the same routine of starting the day by shutting off my alarm turning my huge body around n go back to sleep, same prob of not having a broadband connection at the villas…. the administration has to try and help us out, but it seems to have its own limitations….

Will keep you guys posted…..

I know I have been lazy and havent updated the blog. So here let me try… I am back in my cosy home on my cosy lil bed blogging. It was an excellent flight. Took some pics of mumbai by night will post them soon. Well I have been chillaxing. Doing nothing but eat, sleep and surf. Collecting a lot of data which I plan to take back. Lots of movies, videos and music. Will finally get to hear Kishore Da in Dubai after a long time. I have become lazy. So till the next time.. cya folks….

n yea forget to tell u guys this year also plannin 2 write a novel alongwith my closest friend in Dubai —> Swathi Sridharan. Will keep you updated on that.

Yes people. I am getting older and I find it amazing that I feel that I have grown older faster. Today on 22nd September 2005, I turn 22. I did not notice it but a friend of mine told me, “Hey Venky this b’day has to special. I asked what do you mean? And pat came the reply, ” You are turning 22 on the 22nd. Its once in a lifetime thing dude.”

So I guess this is a special and unique birthday. I am going for a desert safari this Sunday 25th September, will post details on that. Till then you guys take care and have fun.

I realise that it’s been a long time since I updated my blog about my life as a b-school student, I had just written the first part So, here is the (hopefully) much awaited second part. I hope that it is interesting this time.

Today afternoon at 12.52 pm, I got a mail from Prof. Christopher asking for people who will be interested in joining the Marketing Strategy committee for S P Jain Center of Management, Dubai and Singapore. Even though I am a finance guy, I loved the idea of trying to help my college with it’s marketing strategy was the challenge and inspiration I needed to get out of my dumb, boring routine.

Prof. Suranjan Das has been here for 2 days as of today and it is an tremendous experience learning from him. He is one of the most loved prof’s here. But the only thing is that his quizzes are sometimes on the edge of bringing us down to our knees even though we have Microsoft Excel at our disposal.

We had Prof. Chetan’s group work. It was hectic plus I was adding finishing touches to the Business Law group assignment. I dont know what happened but I just answered all the questions and completed the whole assignment on my own. I myself was surprised at my dedication and patience. I was finetuning it, trying to make the language a bit more ‘legal’ then realised that the answers to the most questions were in the contract and all I had to do was to type in the clause and lo, I had my answers . The moment the Group work session got over. I rushed to the leadership hall alongwith the handycam that I borrowed from Kuldeep for making my videography which I am planning to send back home.

I went to the meet at 5.30 pm today. It was in the board room. Now this is a very long room. I think around 8-12 feet long and about 4-5 feet wide. It has a huge table in the middle of the room. Prof. Christopher chaired the meeting and he started off by telling us about the target audience, what image we want to portray, what are the possible ideas we will get.

We asked a few questions mostly related to the launch of the new campus in Singapore,majorly whether we would be getting an oppurtunity to go to Singapore on an exchange basis. Unfortunately we will not be having that priviledge compared to the incoming batch which has to compulsorily go to Singapore for some time as part of their program. So now we are a global b-school with twin campuses.

Ok so let’s come back to the topic here. I tried to give some ideas but they were shot down expect the one wherein I said why not create a competition wherein people can come up with ideas as I felt that 126 heads put together was definitely better than 6 heads.

Since then my mind is working full time on this. I want to know come out with a good idea for this. If you have any in the mind please do let me know, you will certainly be given due credit for the same.

Add to this, the Table Tennis tournament in our college just started today with an exhibition match between our librarian Satish Ranjalkar and our Operations Management Prof. Chetan Soman. It was an entertaining match. I wanted to record it on the handycam but unfortunately I had to rush for this marketing strategy meeting, well one thing I have definitely learnt in a b-school is the importance of prioritizing.

I heard the match was closely fought and eventually in the end Satish beat Prof. Chetan.

Then I rushed to get dinner, suddenly it seems that there is a gang of people who have been stealing other people’s dinner. The only way to escape from this gang is to get your dinner before these guys get to it.

Then I am here sitting online blogging away as I am bringing this hectic day to an end. Will get the bus and go to the villas and jump into my bed and sleep… oh my bed! my darling I am coming baby!!!