One week of India was filled with impressions, which will never be forgotten. Many thanks to GSI for a perfect organization and stay in India.
In November 2016 Ralf Jooss (CEO), Ramona Arnold, Daniela Lutz (Marketing) and I, Katrin Mahnke (Product Management) visited our sports flooring customer Great Sports Infra Pvt. Ltd. in Hyderabad, southern India for a week.
The journey there was already an adventure. We became acquainted with the careful, slow Indian bureaucracy at Mumbai airport, and then had a strenuous athletic run to make our connecting flight. The rest of the week, however, was beautifully organised. Our Indian friends had put together a full package with excellent support.
When we arrived in Hyderabad we were taken to the hotel. Over the following days we had the opportunity to get to know the unusual features of India with our colleagues from Great Sports Infra.
On the one hand there is the impressive and ubiquitous Indian traffic, with very full streets, permanent sounding of horns, and a wild confusion of pedestrians, motor bikes and cars – yet somehow it functions in a quite relaxed manner. On the other hand, we enjoyed the legendary Indian cuisine. Some was spicy, but not too spicy, it was hugely varied and was really delicious. In addition there was Indian culture. We visited a mu-seum, admired colourful markets and climbed mo-numents and a castle. We are now immortalised in countless selfies with Indian families!
The aim of the visit was to deliver a customer seminar to the management team and the site managers where technical and marketing questions could be discussed.
The technical section addressed many questions around the installation of sports floorings. These ranged from requirements of the subsurface, through to the primer and installation of the sports floorings, and then to test certificates and other technical documentation. The working atmosphere was lightened by interesting and amusing construction stories. Both this section and the presentation of the new marketing tools were marked by an open, cooperative dialogue, enabling all partici-pants to go home with new knowledge to apply to their daily work.
We spent the last two days in Goa with Anil Kumar (Managing Director), Rupesh Tikku (Director Sales), Col. John K John (Director Operations) and Sandeep Singh (General Manager – Operations). There were many good discussions in this relaxed atmosphere about future cooperation between the two companies. There was also excellent Indian food, relaxation on beautiful beaches, and no shortage of fun.
I would like to thank our Indian hosts once more for the varied, interesting, exciting, informative, educational, great, pleasant and unforgettable week. I hope we can undertake similar seminars again soon.