Day 5 and Day 6: Khulja Sim Sim- a doorway to technology, final pitch presentation!

Since the past four days in Hangzhou, I was so used to the routine of waking up early, having breakfast, heading out to the campus, attending all the sessions, group discussions, coming back preparing for the pitch and all the myriad of conversations and then going to bed early in the morning! As the days passed, a sense of familiarity, liking started to grow and the city felt more like home and it had just been four days. It was new, uncanny and I loved it.

Day five was an embellishment to the entire summit! A visit to Alibaba group and in the evening to the West Lake- an ancient,evergreen for poets of generations to pass! And things could not have gotten better.
               As the bus entered the premises, I saw a line of bikes parked perfectly in a row! Beauty.


                                                          Enter Alibaba group!
Ni hao! Taobao
                           

Hangzhou, the Silicon Valley of China is where Alibaba was launched and one look at this massive, beautiful campus jazzed up the gloomy, rainy day! After a quick round of photographs and the ASES cheer, we all entered the office gawking naively at every nook and corner and that is where I had seen the first Costa Coffee during my four days in Hangzhou (temporarily teleported to Bangalore and back in a jiffy!)




Framed!

 We had a guide who took us for a quick tour of the office and while the interiors resounded with Chinese culture, staring outside of the window for two minutes would make you feel you were at Orion Mall,Bangalore or something! Such was the resemblance to the environment in Bangalore! All Silicon Valleys alike.


To give us more insight into the company, its outreach and how it has evolved over the years, we had a presentation by one of the representatives and although a lot of it was in Chinese, I could get the crux of it; Dig through the wormhole, enter the market and hold your ground! That is how you make it quick and make it big and finding that necessity and reaching out to the public through your services is the most intelligent and enduring motive that a company can have to sustain itself. In China there exists a parallel technological universe; Google services being unavailable in the country is a handicap for foreign travelers and is sometimes a disadvantage to the natives as well since the search engine results are highly manipulated, but come to think of it, they have made sure that all the facilities  people outside of China can avail online are made available to the Chinese population but in a more exclusive manner. Instead of Google there is Baidu, Amazon there is Taobao, Instead of Facebook, there is WeChat and many more. This self-sufficiency is very interesting, inspiring and baffling, all at the same time.

After spending quality time on the premises, we next headed out to the incubator space of Jennifer Zhang, an angel investor. A beautiful spread of lunch awaited me!
Dragon fruit, water melon and a cup of lukewarm milk tea! But what really touched me was how time and again the organizers of the summit made sure that even the couple of us vegetarians had something vegetarian to eat, be it bread,lasagna or some garden salad with the entire garden spread out neatly on my plate layered with sauce!

After a wholesome meal, we had a break of about ten minutes when out of the blue this cute little fluff ball appeared out of nowhere and decided to grace the occasion!

                                                 Who loves bananas by the way!

After our tryst with this Samoyed celeb, we had a very interactive session with Jennifer where she spoke about the conducive environment of China for budding entrepreneurs and the policies which favor them. There was a rather philosophical edge to the discussion when she spoke about knowing the true meaning of survival, of doing what one wants to do and how sometimes things do not work out and the workarounds. This was a very interactive lunch which opened our minds to new possibilities and perspectives.
The view outside of the incubator space was a medley of art and technology and the QR cube was testimony to it.
We then headed out Sujie, another incubator space founded by a former Alibaba employee where the two best pitches from the mock presentation; one which dealt with an NGO collaboration with share bikes company for fundraising and another which dealt with an online shopping portal where shoppers can order custom products which the travelers who publicize the product would buy for them, both extremely interesting were given a chance to make their pitch in front of the founders of the startup and receive feedback on how to improve them.

Some of the products being developed in China are really intriguing, these products have been devised targeting needs that people didn't think needed to be addressed.
A toothbrush system  to make brushing interesting for kids! I still can't get my head around this.

An electronic Tupperware box which once closed can only be opened with the help of a mobile application and the calorie content and quality of the food can be assessed using the app.



This is no gadget but I am sure it will be one day, because everything is automated in Hangzhou.

            Speaking of a parallel technological universe, this is Rokid, Echo's Chinese counterpart.

The crescendo, our last stop was the West Lake. When I read about the beauty it is, the description highlighted how it had been an inspiration to many poets and it was that history that enriched the versatility beatified it.
It is just a souvenir shop and look at the beauty!






We then headed out for dinner at one of the lakeside restaurants and boom! We were back at the hotel, ready to finish our pitch preparation



Presenting my team, which worked on the pitch presentation of our VR-based educational system.


What an amazing, liberating experience it was!

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