Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Eavesdropping in an Elevator...

My office is on the 7th floor and each floor has close to about 200 employees. So there are about 1400 employees in one building and there are just 3 elevators. So on an average, a trip from the ground floor to the 7th or vice versa takes close to 5 minutes since the elevator practically stops at every floor. It's very interesting to see people of all shapes, sizes and sensibilities for a brief period of time. Sometimes, their talk can form fodder for a blog post like this one :)

So, I was taking the elevator from the 7th floor to the ground and I was joined by a bunch of men who sit in the same wing as I do. One of them being particularly loud forced me to eavesdrop, even though I had absolutely no intentions to do so. So they started talking about the sudden outbreak of malls and foodmarts in Pune - More, Spencer's, Subhikhsa, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Mart, Chaupal Fresh and so on. Then Mr Loud got stuck on Reliance Mart and they started discussing whether it belonged to Mukesh Ambani or Anil Ambani. After considerable discussion, they reached on a consensus that Reliance Mart belongs to Mukesh and that Anil's businesses now begin with BIG. And after Anil acquired Adlabs, Gold Adlabs Pune changed to BIG Cinema or so they were discussing. We all have our own opinions about everything and we get judgmental about any thing quite fast. So Mr Loud rants that 'Mukesh does everything very sensibly. See his business is going to grow like anything. He has inherited the right traits of his dad - the late Dhirubhai. But Dhirubhai's younger son - Anil has absolutely no business sense. He gets into any business for the heck of it. How would one explain him getting into the entertainment business. He just has money and wants to spend it. See one day, he'll fall flat on his face...' and he continued with his analysis on how business empires should be run.

I looked at him with askance thinking how could one make such thoughtless comments without knowing the full details. I am sure when he reads this blog, he would be surprised to know that Anil Ambani is opening up a studio on LA with Steven Spielberg and plans to produce 30-35 films over the next 5 years. (details here) I am sure Anil Ambani, a Wharton graduate and heir of the illustrious Dhirubhai Ambani has a little better business acumen than Mr Loud who interestingly tests defects and shouts JDBC - ODBC across the room with his 'oh-so-loud-irritating-voice'.

But nonetheless, thanks to him - this is my 2nd post in a day - he gave me fodder for thought :)

6 comments:

Namrata said...

I guessed him :P

Namrata said...

haha! i guessed him :P

Anonymous said...

you should have told me that when we were discussing it, there is no point publicizing about our privet conversations like this. And I am not that loud, there is no rule about how loud you should talk.

TheBarrenMind said...

Nice blog Mihir!!

deepjagdish said...

Sahi ja raha hai beta .... i guessed him too....

suneeta said...

I guessed him to :)