Day 2: Blackstone, Reliance, IL&FS, Karaoke

My sincerest apologies to all of the fans of the blog for the delay in my posts. As you will read, it's been a very busy few days!!

Day 2 started off at the HAji ali mosque pictured below. It was a beautiful morning and the mosque is clearly a sight to see. Seeing as how it had been at least 45 minutes since we last ate, we then grabbed fruit creme at a famous stand just outside.

We then traveled to meet a distinguished GSB alum, Akhil Gupta who is Senior Managing Director and Chairman of Blackstone capital. Blackstone is one of the largest private equity firms in the world and is very successful in India. Mr. Gupta shared with us his years of experience at the highest levels of business in the US and India as well as great advice on navigating through the GSB. It seems like everyone loves touchy feely (a famous class at gsb) - What goes on in this class!! It was a great session for the group.

After the meeting, Abheek and I came upon a dabawallah. For those that haven't yet taken GSBGEN 203 Global Context of Management, these men pick up packed lunches form the

suburbs of Mumbai and deliver to workers in the city center at lunchtime for a few rupees a day. They do this through a complex series of exchanges with other dabawallahs and rarely make mistakes. Here I am with one of these individuals below. I don't think that he was as excited to see me as I was to see him...

After a delicious pizza lunch, we traveled to the corporate headquarters of Reliance Industries to

meet the Chairman and CEO, Mr. Mukesh Ambani. Mr. Ambani is also a gsb alum and is approximately the 4th richest man in the world. Here you can see Sonia, Professor Rajan and Ray preparing for the meeting. You can see that Ray is formulating one of his patented poignant questions for Mr. Ambani (it would later nearly bring him to tears). We had about an hour of the Chairman's time during which he discusses his life, his business philosophy and his advice for the group. I think that I can safely say that it was a once-in-a-lifetime meeting for everyone involved.

Now that's a busy day!! But it didn't stop. We then visited IL&FS which is an active infrastructure group in India which proved to be a very interesting meeting. Then off to an alumni dinner downtown and finally some karaoke. Below you see Quentin making new friends over an 80's ballad and the group giving a rousing performance of "We are the World." Which is true, we are actually from 10 countries with a diverse set of backgrounds - even Canada!! (thanks for coming Kelly!!)

Day 2 was truly a remarkable day that I will not soon forget.