Setting the Stage

I will be honest; this blog is not too exciting... I am just preparing you, my dear readers, for future blogs by giving you a scoop on the place where I live and work. Nevertheless, it's still a good read.

Working at the Deshpande Centre for Social Entrepreneurship

AquaSafi's head office is located in the nearby city of Gadag, but I work at an incubation centre on the BVB college campus. Before opening its new office, AquaSafi's office was located here. It has only been a week, so I have not had much to do, but I expect things to pick up soon. My first assignment will involve analyzing sales data to determine what drives sales at successful plants versus unsuccessful ones.

The incubation centre, the Deshpande Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, was opened in 1996 and is comparable to Communitech in Waterloo. It's a pretty awesome place. There are usually leadership programs, engineering workshops, and entrepreneurship conferences taking place, so I have met many cool people. There are also people pursuing their Masters in Social Entrepreneurship. You have to take off your shoes once inside, which is pretty cool, so I get to go barefoot at work.

Aside: The founder of the Deshpande Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Gururaj Deshpande, did his Masters at the University of New Brunswick and his Ph.D. at Queen's University! In addition to the center he funded here in Hubli, he has also helped fund Deshpande innovation centres at MIT and the University of New Brunswick!

BVB College

The BVB Engineering and Technology College is where I am staying. My residence is called the BVB-Deshpande Scholars house, and I eat at a couple canteens around campus. The college is affiliated with Visvesvaraya Technological University. In India, each college is affiliated with a university, and when you graduate, you get a degree from the affiliated university. The college with which I am familiar back in Canada does not exist in India.

Also, the majority of people study engineering or medicine (engineering being the more common of the two). In fact, engineering is almost a continuation of high school...everybody studies it. A friend I play football with says that you are not considered an adult until you have finished your engineering degree. It is also extremely competitive. According to my cousins, some kids are preparing to study engineering from grade three (or third standard as they say here), and on every bus in Mumbai you can find an advertisement for tutoring.