South Africa, Y2K: The year of reckoning

The year was 2000. The world was anticipating on how the software designed for the Y2K Bug would react. The humankind survived a millennium against Nostradameus predictions of a dooms day in 1997.

I had completed 1 year of my professional career. A young MBA, with a passion to change the world with my transformational views.

21st October 2000, I embarked on my first Professional International Journey. We had just signed a partner and myself along with my colleague and friend Abhishek were chosen to bring them upto speed. Over the next 2 weeks, we were supposed to train the teams, attend joint customer meetings and literally make them independant for attending to solutioning and sales.

Exciting, but there was one problem. In this 14 day trip, we only had 5 working days. The others were holidays owing to Diwali and a few other festivals between India and SA.

I was a young lad with a head full of hair, grossly underweight and a lot of passports before. In short, very different from what I am today. Abhishek and Me were crazily looking forward to this.

We boarded our domestic flight from Delhi to Mumbai. Furtheron, the “huge” South African Airlines flight was to take us from Mumbai to Johannesburg.

Our hosts had deputed a third generation Indian, Joe Pooniswami, to look after us thinking that we might be at home with him. And we sure were glad that Joe was our local guardian of sorts. Joe welcomed us to Joburg (as we cam to know later on what Johannesburg was called) with his family.

A Serviced apartment at Bedford View was waiting for us. A plush two bedroom apartment with a complete kitchen and a living area.

We started with our training and slowly made sure that we imparted all our knowledge to our hosts and local partners.

But that is not why I call it the year of reckoning. There were multiple firsts that happened during that trip which laid the foundation for the person I was to become.

1. The concept of Serviced Apartments was new and it was definitely more comfortable.
2. We noticed steel pipes on the bottom side of the cars. This apparently ejected flames should someone try and mug you.
3. On real highways cars could literally “fly”.
4. Diwali is celebrated with equal enthusiasm in South Africa.
5. Indians in SA follow a lot of Indian traditions.
6. Cellphones are more than just blocks used to carry for flaunting.
7. The car Beetle is really nice.

Did I mention that during the 14 days trip, Diwali was on a Wednesday. Our hosts knew how much it meant for us. Hence, we worked during the day a day before and in the evening we were warmly welcomed by Joe’s family in their local Indian community to celebrate Diwali. From there we headed to an Indian gathering where they played hard core Punjabi Music. The trip to the gathering was simply amazing. This was the first time we sat in a BMW and it was certainly more comfortable than a Maruti 800. And when it touched 120Km/hr we felt we were going to take off.

On Diwali, myself and Abhishek decided to stay vegetarian. Having minimal options to eat we microwaved 1 Kg of French fries and had them for dinner. Waited till 12 at night to finally have our fill with a roasted chicken. What a night.

Finally, out hosts drove us to Suncity with families. Felt like dignitaries on a state trip.

What we learn’t from this trip was worth a million lessons.

1. The most important, businesses are driven by Humans and humanness in business is something that binds and makes individuals committed.
2. Learn about the weather, what to wear before you land at a place. SA follows reverse weather cycles as compared to India.
3. Always learn about the culture and history of the country that you are visiting. How one is greeted and reciprocating the greeting is the key. In SA for example, one normally greets you with “How are you doing?”. Your response should be simple “I am doing well, and you?”. Shows simply that you are concerned about the other individual as well.
4. If you are hosting someone, make sure you understand their peculiarities and make extra effort to make them comfortable.

It is not always about money.

I remember a mentor of mine telling me much later in life. This holds true across regions, religions and cultures.

” People do business with the people they like”.

Till we meet later….