home..career..dream

Today both PV and Philip are not in Hyderabad. PV is on a mission to convince the funders in Mumbai to fund us while Philip is busy trying to rope in a tenant for his new house. Even I should start planning to buy a good house to live in Hyderabad. After yesterdays visit to the site of the upcoming villas in Hyderabad, my mind is just not letting go. Those are the most beautiful house models and concepts I have ever seen. The biggest villa is over 14000 sft on a land area of 1.1 acre with 6 servant houses, 6 car parks, 2 gardens, a swimming pool and sit-out and 7 bedrooms priced at rupees 12 crore. Lavish is a small word. The concept is Spanish and the architecture is by an architect from Jaipur.

Coming back to work...today has been a not so hectic day...prepared a simple model for the Golf course residential township on the lines of the Spanish villa. PV is of the view that we should have many smaller plots / houses and fewer large villas. In my opinion this would affect the quality of life, increase the population in the township and hence the maintenance cost would be huge. Its basically a trade off between quality and price. However, all this is subjective and basically depends on the positioning.

Work on the Vijayawada mall is progressing slowly. Had a meeting with JLL on understanding the retail business, the tenant mix, process of selecting tenants, what do the tenants look for and the average rent that JLL could guarantee us. They didn't do their homework, didn't even study the Vijayawada market thinking PVP Ventures is a small firm tha would not be of much help to them. I had to tell them about PV and our long-term plans and that set them on their toes.

Then updated PV on these 2 projects.

And then I had nothing to do. Ramakrisha and I watched funny videos on google for a while and then both Ramakrishna and Krishna left for the day.

Also had lunch at Angeethi with Ramakrishna and Krishna. Good place. The owner has managed to have a dhaba concept in the middle of congested Hyderabad on the 7th floor of a cramped building. And the place is buzz with people at lunch time. Food service Industry is on a high at the moment in India.

Just before going out for lunch, an old classmate praveen chaitanya called. Wanted to meet me but I don't want to. Asked him to call me after lunch. He didn't. end of the story.

On the way to lunch, Krishna started an interesting conversation on career. People worry too much about their careers. They worry about money. They worry about recognition. I told him not to worry much about money and recognition. They are by-products. The true product is the learning and the value we add to our work. Work should be purposeful and meanigful. Also told him not to focus on real estate or any single industry as a long term career. Working for too long in a particular field or industry restricts the learning. We need to change industries, learn more, experience more. Also our core competency should not be industry specific. I gave him the example of PV whose core competency is outsourcing services. very industry neutral and he has been changing to industries as and when they are high. Even I plan to do the same thing. Thats my goal.

And my dream remains to join the Foreign Service.