New Delhi, the capital of India was our first destination. We were warmly welcomed and enjoyed great hospitality. The Swiss Embassy introduced us to projects where India and Switzerland cooperate. At Blaser Swisslube Pvt. India, we had highly interactive discussions on Blaser’s corporate culture and their value systems. Last but not least, as a cultural highlight we had the privilege to visit the world’s most famous Taj Mahal.
On our first day, we were warmly welcomed at the Swiss Embassy by Indraneel Ghose, Senior Advisor Education, Research & Innovation. Indraneel introduced us to our program, consisting of several interesting speeches on projects where Switzerland and India cooperate.
Marie-Laure Crettaz, Head of Swiss Cooperation Office gave an introductory speech on areas Switzerland and India have beneficial synergies. While India is in need of efficient and sustainable energy supplies, Switzerland has the expertise to support the Indian government to implement such solutions. Some of the most significant areas of cooperation were energy efficiency in buildings, renewable energy sources, and how energy consumption can be planned more efficiently.
Following Marie-Laure’s speech, Jonas Baumann, Diplomatic Advisor explained the process and impact of the upcoming world’s biggest election from 11 April to 19 May 2019 in India. Jonas stressed on the complexity and duration of the election. More than 800 million Indians are going to vote over the period of six weeks to elect the new government of India.
Beat Wälchli, Head of Visa Section in India introduced us to the Schengen visa issuing process. Issuing visas is a complex and long lasting process. The embassy’s visa section processes an impressive amount of visas each year. Some of the challenges the visa section faces are fraud as forging documents and visa shopping.
Emani Kumar from the Local Government of Sustainability told us about the Smart Cities Mission that perfectly fits our theme «enableAccessibility. expandConnectivity. forsterTransfer.» So far, 100 Indian cities have committed to transform to become smarter cities. For the majority of these cities, the key investment commitment is urban transportation.
As a last input, Sanjay Dube, CEO International Institute for Energy Convervation (IIEC) gave us some insight into India’s efforts into transforming into renewable energy sources. In fact, India has set ambitious targets to change renewable energy of 175 Gigawatt. India estimates that achieving its 40% non-fossil capacity target would result in an emissions level of around 5 GtCO2e by 2030 (385% above 1900 emissions level excluding LULUCF).
In the afternoon, we visited our joint-partner, Blaser Swisslube Pvt. India. Punit Gupta, Managing Director gladly received us at their office. Punit Gupta led an highly interactive discussion on Indian, as well as the company’s corporate culture. With these insights, it came to our mind how much we can actually learn from Indians.
Some of Punit Gupta’s inspirational messages:
- India’s value system: we’re hungry to seek, for resources, to listen and to contribute
- At Blaser, we make every contact with Blaser Swisslube a positive experience for our customer
- At Blaser, we want to bring heart and mind together. This is Blaser’s winning formula to succeed. If the heart isn’t functioning, the brain power doesn’t matter
- Blaser’s success in India lies within applying global processes locally, and combining the strengths of Swissness with India’s hunger to seek for knowledge and resources, to listen to understand the world, and to contribute
Taj Mahal
On Saturday, we took the train to Agra to visit the world’s most famous ivory-white mausoleum, the Taj Mahal. Despite the early Indian summer heat and big crowds, the visit to the Taj Mahal was for many of us a dream come true. The scenery was magical and unbelievably beautiful. In 1648, the Taj Mahal was made bare handed with marble. Later on, we were given insights on how the gorgeous flower encravings were made for the Taj Mahal at the Marbel Factory.
Have a look at our video to get a glimpse of our experience in New Delhi.