Another week down

It was a dramatic week, which makes the weekend so much more welcome! Today (Friday) we had a business visit to Biocon, a biotech/pharmaceutical company. I found the visit to be very interesting for several reasons:

1. Biocon was founded by a female back in the 70s, who remains the CEO today. This would be pretty cool in the U.S., but is amazing in India, a country which continues to be mainly male dominated to this day.
2. Two of the XIME students are interning their this summer. I had the opportunity to discuss their school and internship experience with them, which allowed for comparison to the U.S. experience. Here, summer internships are mandatory, and are actually a class MBA students must take. At the end of the internship, they have a lengthy paper they must submit to the college. At U of A, internships are only highly encouraged, and no credit is given for them.
3. We toured part of the facilities in which the drugs are created, packaged, and shipped. It was amazing to see such a sterile environment in a country that otherwise seems very unsterile and not clean. The facilities were huge, taking up 240 acres - much larger than anything else we have seen in Bangalore thus far. 

The visit was a great way to finish off the week!

After the visit, we all headed back to campus to change our clothes (no need to stay in business casual longer than absolutely necessary!) and finalize dinner plans. A group of 7 of us decided to head to the Hard Rock Cafe. We were excited to get burgers actually made with ground beef, real bacon, ranch dressing, and soak in the Americana! Turns out the Hard Rock proved to have both ground beef and bacon, but not so much ranch as we are used to back in the states. Two out of three was fine with us though! We had a good time, thoroughly enjoyed the food and music, and all walked out very full. There is a good chance we will head back there another time before our stay in India is over.