A quick trip to Hyderabad
Yesterday was the last day of almost two weeks working in Hyderabad (India’s 6th biggest city) with Uber’s new Analytics Centre of Excellence! The team & people couldn’t have been more hospitable, and with Hyderabadis taking great pride in their food I think I’ve had a fair go at trying everything on the menu (and I think they enjoyed at least a few laughs at my cluelessness about the food).
A few things that surprised me about Hyderabad:
- Given Hyderabad is a tech hub (it’s home to Google’s biggest office outside of Mountain View!) I expected Hyderabad to perhaps be less true to India’s culture, but this was far from the case. People dressed more traditionally (sarees, kurtas/kurtis) than I expected, even in the “Hitech City”- home to (in some cases multiple) Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Uber & Google offices. There also seemed to be far less foreigners and expats than I expected, which meant we got a bit more attention than we anticipated.
- I met a lot of people, whether at the markets or at the office, and very few of those I met were actually from Hyderabad. Most had relocated for better work opportunities and spoke fondly of where they were from.
- While apparently a bit less hectic than the likes of Delhi or Mumbai, I rarely felt unsafe in Hyderabad. People were incredibly friendly and really keen to help us find our way around and see more of the city.
- This perhaps shouldn’t have been a surprise, but after spending all of my first week within Hitech City I started to expect that perhaps the rest of Hyderabad was much the same. Not the case - things changed quite quickly as we moved further out and closer to the Old City. Locals say that the area surrounding the tech offices has really only appeared in the last 15 years, while the rest of Hyderabad has an ancient & incredibly rich history dating back to ~500 BCE. In just a weekend we saw everything from cannons gifted by Queen Victoria to forts designed by former kings to have the right acoustics for listening to their guests’ conspiracies against those in power.
While I'm here I feel I should recommend this article shared to me by my manager, that talks about the incredible (and much studied) dabbawala ("one who carries the box") food delivery network in Mumbai. It's a virtually tech-free delivery service that serves ~200k customers a day and has less than 3.4 late or missing deliveries per million! Pretty remarkable and proof that clever systems and dedication to a worthy cause can match the power of algorithm-driven apps.
All-in-all I can't wait to see how Hyderabad (and India generally) continues to develop as a hot spot for homegrown and international tech startups. It's clear the locals, and Silicon Valley, are excited about its potential.
