Skip to main content

A Small & Medium Enterprise: Our First Client Visit

Yesterday, we went to our first client visit. Loren, Doris and I were accompanied by our two interpreters who had actually setup the meeting. The company had sent a 6-seater Buick for us. We drove for about an hour before we reached the company. The office was located in a pretty shabby neighbourhood. But the office and factory itself was very very big and swanky. I was, in fact, very surprised to see such a large campus for a supposed SME. The company was the largest private sector player in its domain and was planning an IPO in the near future.

We were welcomed by the CFO, Vice President and Head of Corporate Management. We were served with Jasmine tea and hot water! Then we went through a preliminary introduction of the company's profile. We were also shown a video about the company that was fairly comprehensive. Then we went into a detailed discussion about the company's operations, challenges, future strategies and growth plan. It was a fairly detailed and frank discussion. It appeared that the top management was very clear on the challenges that the companies face. After the discussions, we were invited to a lunch and were driven to a restaurant a little distance from the office. It was  fish-specialty restaurant and we had about six dishes of fishes. A couple of them were very spicy. The food in general was good.

We went back after lunch to the office and talked to the head of the marketing, HR and International business. We discussed their plans and challenges in detail.

After the work was done, we drove back to Chengdu and went to Starbucks for a cup of coffee. We started working on the presentation for the company and did a fair bit of research. For dinner, the consensus was that the team had a lot of Chinese food and would go and have something "familiar" so went went to Pizza Hut. I had a veg pizza and Wurberry juice. It was nearly 10 pm before we returned to the hotel and went to sleep.

Today we started working from the morning and have nearly completed the presentation that we are to give them on Thursday.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Old friends reunite

This weekend was great. Saturday we went to the Alumni Association of our school (AGCS). I met a lot of old friends after over 14 years. I met Irshad, Tabish, Hemant, Debarshi Ganguly, Durjoy Sengupta, Rajni and Kavita after 1995. It felt really nice to see these people. Sandip (Das) is now in Calcutta for a vacation. So, today we met at Tung Fong, Park Street. Sandip and his wife, Sudipta and his wife, Biswajit and me. Sanjoy and Chotu came late, nearly the time when it was time for Bishu and me to leave. It's nice and cold in Calcutta now, so it was good to go to Park Street in the evening. The good thing was I managed to come out without eating a lot, so the new year resolution is on track.
Post a Comment
Read more

Oil, Liquidity and the Sensex @ 12K

The BSE Sensex – the default benchmark for the Indian equity market – touched 12,000 on Friday last week. There is a sense of euphoria, disbelief and caution in people depending on which group they belong to. There are people who have been waiting for a correction from 6000 and are amazed to see the sensex at double that. There are others who are perennial optimists and expect the market to continue giving them the returns in the way it has in the last 3 years. Milestones like 12000 are a nice point to just stand back and access the overall situation. So, what is the reality of the day? Today, the price of oil is hovering around $70 with the political situation in Iran not getting a whole lot better. Don’t think its going to come down in a while. Interest rates are showing signs of hardening. Prices of gold, silver, steel, aluminium, copper, zinc and sugar are in multi year highs. Real estate prices are going through the roof. So, in a way all asset classes are seeing handsome app...
Post a Comment
Read more

Porfolio Structuring (PS) Step 1: Evaluate Current Status

The first step to any long term investment plan is to understand where we are at present. So, to start with you need to list down your existing networth. For example, you can have a list as follows: Provident Fund 100,000 PPF 50,000 Bank FD 50,000 Mutual Funds-Equity 150,000 Mutual Funds-Debt 50,000 Cash In Savings Account 30,000 House 2,000,000 Housing Loan -4,000,000 Others 0 Total -1,570,000 A couple of things to note here. 1. I am not calculating the value of any gold/silver jewellery that you may be having. Indians, typically are not very keen on selling their family gold/silver so it really does not count as investment. You can think of it as an additional bonus if you do have gold/silver. 2. I am including the housing loan you may have as a negative here under the assumption that that is your primary home and not a second home bought for investment purpose. Also, I am ...
Post a Comment
Read more