Goodbye, GreenMango

Today was my last day at GreenMango and this is my last night in Hyderabad. It’s been an amazing experience and the staff of GreenMango has been absolutely awesome. I took a lot of pictures with people of the past few days, which will help me to remember them, but to be honest I could never forget this experience. Sharing food at lunchtime; taking timelapse videos that catch coworkers skipping English class; learning that Praveena is actually quite a tomboy, Neha quite the rebel, and Uma quite the joker; practicing my poor Telugu; making plans for the trick chair with Khadeer; seeing all the ladies top the sales performance; reaching 15,000 forms; coffee 5 times a day from Lakshmi; 2nd breakfast; Hyderabad 10K; deciding whether my toy auto driver is drunk or just on bad roads; everything.  Everyone wants me to come back to go to the Hyderabad 10K next November. We’ll see…..

10K India Style

Today I walked part of the Hyderabad 10K with my coworkers, mostly just to promote our company.  It started with a group warmup and a live band, followed by the start of the race.  There were serious runners vying for serious prize money, but most people saw it as something fun to do on a Sunday.  Like many participants, we had no intention of completing the race.  I think we maybe completed 2K and in that distance I saw participants buying and eating ice cream and stopping for chai.  During and afterwards, the band played patriotic songs and the crowd danced and drank water and tried to get noticed by the camera for the big screen.  As a white girl with a clearly Indian company, I stood out a little.  I was interviewed by 2 local news stations (I don’t have a TV so I don’t know if I actually got air time).  Hopefully it’s all good press for GreenMango.  It was sure fun for those of us who turned out.

Other parts of the race were pretty much the same as what I’ve seen in the US.  There is a lot of corporate sponsorship and corporate groups running together.  This particular event was the first major public event in Hyderabad since the recent events in Mumbai, so there were moments of silence and words of support for everyone there.  I was impressed that the event had a large turnout despite the Mumbai attacks.

Workin' for the Man-go

This is my third week at GreenMango and I’m loving it. I’ve had a chance to go out “in the field” and see our sales staff recruit vendors for the website. These sales associates go down every narrow street and alley in their territories. One of the biggest hurdles is gaining the trust of these vendors, as they are initially skeptical of any new model. It is also difficult for some of these vendors to understand the nature of a web search; they don’t see how customers will find them using the GreenMango platform. As the GreenMango brand becomes more recognized, this will be less of a problem.