Discovering Myself in Mumbai - 1986 - Part 1

Mumbai then Bombay was a big City. I had been to Mumbai once earlier for a job interview when I flew from Kolkata. That was an experience to remember since the right engine of the aircraft had caught fire midway. This time I was travelling by train from Hyderabad to Bombay and perhaps you would have glanced through the farewell pictures posted earlier in the blog.
So as such Mumbai was an unknown destination to me and while I was excited there was bit of uneasiness too. Tapesh Sinha, a friend from Kolkata was already in Mumbai and he was staying in these bachelor’s temporary stay at YMCA Bombay Central. The tragedy was that he was being ousted out and he was in a quandary on finding a staying place. And then I too arrived and with all my luggage went straight to Network Worli Office. I dumped all my luggage in the store and then both of us went to this place somewhere near Byculla where they allow you to stay for just seven days. It was a dorm and I knew that we had to find something quickly.

Network Mumbai was run by K. Ravishankar who was earlier the chief of Hyderabad Office. On my first meet with him he came across as a no nonsense person and straightaway started talking about sales calls, targets and my favorite sales reports. In Mumbai we had two offices and I was supposed to handle the Nariman Point office along with a team of expert Mumbai sales people!! The other sales office was at Worli and was being handled Rachna Atre. I knew that we were now getting into a bit of professional rivalry if not between me and Rachna, definitely between the two teams!!

My team was introduced to me. There was Anil Bedi brother of Rakesh Bedi(Boillywood Comedian), Joydeep (son of GOC-in-C, Army Western Command), Constantine Rodriguez(perhaps stays in Mira Road now), Alex Jacob(the small bearded Saudi returned ferocious Malayali) and there was Nalini our office secretary whose husband was in Air India. So that was neat I thought and the day next reached Nariman Point, Tulsiani Chambers and was greeted with flowers!! I was being briefed on the accounts we had and basically the sales agenda. K Ravishankar was there too supervising all the interactions. The territories were explained and so were reporting expectations. Basically I was all set to go.

In the evenings myself and Taoesh were back house hunting and it was quite difficult I must say since nobody was willing to rent out to bachelors. We wanted to stay together and therefore the PG format would not work since most of such acco were for singles Our seven days quickly ran out and we were on the streets, literally. The office came to our rescue!! I used to work and then in the evening we used to lock up the premises and then I would meet up my friend somewhere. The keys were with me and we would return to office, and sleep on the tables. The office had an attached bath and in the morning we would get ready. We used to go out for breakfast and I used to return back to office fresh as if have come from somewhere else. Nobody knew that we were spending our nights in that very premises in a comfortable air conditioned environment!!
This honeymoon did not go on for long and finally we found something in Dadar East and that was a relief!! It was Parsi family and our wants of having an independent entrance was solved too. The approach road of course would qualify for the one of the most crowded roads in Mumbai and I was not too happy about it. Beggars could not be choosers though.

Coming back to office, I started going out for calls with my guys. The market was absolutely different in terms of response, demands, negotiations and decision making. It was all upfront. If the customer liked the machine, there was hardly any delay in decision making. When I landed up cpmpetition was again the PCL FX 653 which was tryly a blank beauty compared to our bulky stuff. We still managed to push in ours and we were winning most of the time too. The factors in our favpur was our reputation and after sales and of course pure feature count. But to some discerning customers we were losing out on aesthetics, space and price!!

Then came the news that we were going to have a sales conference in Agra. We were to get a completely new range of machines and we started preparing for the same. At that point of time Network introduce a new team named LAM (Large accounts team) and Balbir Bahl was put in charge of the same reporting directly to Rajeev Khanna at Head office. I always had a conflict with this idea in the sense that we could have ourselves handled the same and especially since I had a government account background. Thankfully the private sector was not into the LAM scheme and thank God for that since the Mumbai private sector contributed more than this new teams’s domain. So when there was this talk of the TATAs being put under LAM, I freaked out and resisted and succeeded too. I was growing up too and learning the nuances of office politics in whatever form!! Ravishankar supported me and Rachna for obvious reasons and we proved ourselves better than the arrogant LAM team!!

The Sales Conference was to be held at Mughal Sheraton, and the whole Mumbai Team was to travel by train. That was the time I was also getting friendly with Mohan George our Customer Service Manager. His wife and Aunt were staying at Bandra and so was K. Ravishankar.
The reservations were done. We had recruited some new sales people like Ambrose Tellis, Aloysius D’ Souza, Llewellyn and others!! We were anticipating in earnest and then the day arrived!! Next time it would be all about Agra and more.