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Tag Archives: managing India-based teams

International Women’s Day in our India office

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It was International Women’s Day yesterday and our Gurgaon team celebrated the day by giving roses to each of our female employees in the Gurgaon office and taking them out to lunch. You can see a picture of most of our our female team members below.

FirstRain is an unusual company in that so many of the leadership are women. Myself (CEO), YY (COO) and Aparna (GM India). We all developed our careers based on deep technical training and hard work – there are no quotas in the technology world – and it is both unusual and worth celebrating to have a deeply technical company with almost 50% of the leadership  being women (and one woman board member too). It may be indeed be unique, we don’t know. And it is probably a sign that women continue to improve the opportunities they have in our society.

As Aparna (our GM in India) told her team:

“International Women’s Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.

The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women’s and society’s thoughts about women. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, more women in the boardrooms, greater equality in legislative rights, and more importantly women’s visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.

2011 is the Global Centenary Year and let’s take this opportunity to celebrate success of all women and especially the India woman Rainmakers.”

A subset of our Gurgaon female team members:

Fun times – kickoff at our India office

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Guest author: Pratyush Nath – a software engineer in our Gurgaon office

FirstRain India celebrated the Annual Company Event on the 8th of January 2011 to culminate the a series of events we have held over the past six months.

It all started with dividing the India rainmakers into six teams bringing together folks from diverse functions. It has been a great run with the teams demonstrating competitive spirit as well as sportsman spirit all through the diverse events like dance, debate, table tennis, face painting competition etc.  The final event was the offsite cricket match on 8th at Surjivan Resorts.  It was refreshing to see people come out in large numbers on a Saturday, braving the chill to support their team and of course FirstRain.

Kicking off the event

The cricket match was followed by some great stand up acts as people enjoyed their drinks and snacks in an atmosphere of camaraderie, taking digs at each other and engaging in casual banter.

The winning team

A stand-up comedy act

Overall it was a fun event and a firm step forward towards the punch line we adopted since the build up to this event:  ‘It is an exciting time to be a part of FirstRain’.

The FirstRain Gurgaon team

More FirstRain teambuilding at the Great Delhi Run

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In keeping with the FirstRain culture of us competing as teams in athletic races – November 1st the FirstRain Gurgaon team took part in the Airtel Delhi Great Run & Half Marathon, along with 30,000 other runners.

The turnout of our team was fabulous, with 28 Rainmakers participating running, including David Cooke from our California office (the pale face in the blue hat below). Everyone met in a huge holding area prior to the run and the atmosphere was festive and exciting.


The run was organized to allow serious runners, teams and revelers alike the same opportunity to make the most of the day. Abhinandan and Ansuman wanted to see how fast they could run the course and so they worked their way to the front of the waiting starters.

Many of the runners were part of corporate teams or clubs, running with banners for their companies or for a common cause they were supporting. There was a sea of banners all around.

Once on the course the Rainmakers ran as a team.

Our banner was for FirstRain but also celebrated Delhi hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010 which is a very exciting opportunity for the city.

As the team got to the start line to show our banners off to the various watching celebrities, Shah Rukh Khan (a HUGE movie star in India) appeared, and the mass of runners turned into a frenzy of excitement. The procession of runners stopped for several minutes.


As we ran local bands also provided fun entertainment and encouragement, as did the famous Kingfisher girls.

Great fun was had by all. The competing team felt that it was wonderful to be part of the team at such a lively, vibrant and health oriented event.

It was a first time out for many. Even so at the finish line there was heard talk that several may graduate to the half marathon next year.

Way to go Rainmakers – I am proud of you!

n.b. Cory from our New York office ran the full New York marathon on Sunday and we are all very proud of him too (and were supporting him as he limped around the office with ice on his knee on Monday)

FirstRain Diwali celebrations

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A note from our Gurgaon office:

Diwali, the festival of lights was celebrated in the Gurgaon office in a colorful way. The dress code was ethnic Indian dresses as the “fun group” organized a bay decoration competition and also got a few stalls put up by the employees. The ambiance was fun-filled with good food around as enthusiastic team members came up with amazingly creative decoration ideas.

Our industry modeling team won by a slight margin over the source management team, with both depicting the various facets of celebrating the Diwali festival. The games put up and the stalls were equally exciting.

Overall, it was great to see the technology and research savvy team show off their creative and artistic abilities.



Management changes foretold the Satyam (SAY) financial fraud

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Satyam’s disastrous news of financial fraud two days ago – which sent the stock plummeting again – could have been seen in advance in the turnover at the top at the end of December. The company had struggled with two acquisitions last year – which we now learn were intended as a last ditch effort to fill the gap – but you can see here in the FirstRain management turnover chart of the last 90 days that 4 board members resigned in December, after very little top level turnover for years.

Board of directors mass turnover only usually happens in a private equity buyout where the board is replaced, otherwise mass turnover is a huge leading indicator that something is very wrong – as was clearly the case at Satyam.