Consulting Survival Guide | Mumbai
Mumbai, a place of hustle and bustle. A place where you need to decide if you want to save ‘time’ or get some ‘space’. I choose to stay in Dadar as ‘time’ was my priority. At the heart of Mumbai, I knew my consulting career is going to steer me anywhere at anytime. I didn’t want to be left out in the race just due to distance and time. Hence I choose a place near Shivaji Park. A power center of Mumbai, where the is head quarters of Shiv Sena, local dominant party. Seeing back my decision, I see it was the best decision I have taken. All travels were highly efficient and convenient. Whether it was going back to my home in Gujarat, taking a early morning flight (20 mins), travelling to far end in Belapur or travelling to cuff parade, everything was easy and refreshing.
Following are the things that were most helpful to me in getting successful in my career.
1. Relations:
Mumbai is all about relationship. People are connected and affectionate. They believe in helping others and expect getting help back. There are two ways to work. One is you do the work completely yourself. Other one is you take the experience from others to make it more better. Let me put an example of Ola and Uber. Uber had an established model. Ola took an inspiration from Uber and added many more features which later on Uber added to its platform. This resulted in Ola’s success. Help others tirelessly. I know in Mumbai, you hardly get time. ‘Mala time nahi’ slogan is in the air. Still you need to take time out for others to help in their endeavour. Consider this as in investment with a high return.
One example: I was into Cyber security. I sat with finance advisory late night after my cyber work to help them in portfolio investment which was my side passion. On my last day of firm, I got a grand farewall as well as job offer from finance advisory from the Directors as compared to my cyber team. There are lot such examples.
Even though Mumbai as 2+ Crore population, each one has their own importance. Every drop in ocean matters. When I see crowd passing by Dadar station bridge, I feel like what the hell! How many people! (Est. 60Lakh people travel on dadar station daily). Still each one counts. Mumbai has habit to respect each one of them. Hence don’t spoil relations with anyone. You never know when would someone showup when you need them.
Balance Online & Offline:
New generations tend to order online. Even I used to order from Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon Prime Now, Flipkart, Super Daily etc. This creates a distance with local shop owners. Try to buy from local shops and build your offline credit too. One fine day, in heavy rainy season, I went to shivaji park to enjoy rains. I had no wallet or phone and was very hungry. One of the restaurant owner knew me so he offered my hot vadas in heavy rain and I said I don’t have money. And as classic mumbaikar says ‘Chalega’. An offline credit result of offline relation. Even though swiggy offers 50% discount on same restaurant try visiting each places in your residential and office neighbourhood to build your circle.
2. Local events and areas:
Mumbai is tiring. Weekends, you don’t feel like going outside as you prefer resting. Advantage staying in town was all events were very nearby. Whether its Flea Market or concert, Kala Ghoda cultural festival or Christmas celebrations at Malls. Visit these places to keep yourselves lively and keep the fire inside going. Events High, BookMyShow events are best places to hunt for the events. If you are a spiritual/religious person, Speaking Tree on Sunday news paper gives a schedule about next full week of all kinds of spiritual events like Meditation, Scripture lectures etc.
I was found of thali. I explored each and every place in Mumbai which offered thali! Find your passion and hunt it in Mumbai. You will enjoy it.
3. New challenges at Work:
I personally feel, Mumbai is not as innovative as Pune and Bangalore. Suppose you are good at one skill and you keep doing the same in different projects. We will not grow our circle and umbrella by this. For any company there are times when something new has to be done which no one ever has done in the firm. Take this chance up. There will be a high chance of failure. But in doing this, you will be using all veins and corners of your brain to figure out how to get that done. Did you remember ‘relations’, here they will come into picture. Take up that challenge and let yourself fail sometime. Learn these new things and pass on the knowledge to your juniors or colleagues and again move on! In learning and taking up new challenges, you will meet various new faces and teams of different skillset which will broaden your horizon. Believe me, there will be only 2–5% people who take these ‘new’ challenges themselves. No one tells them to do it. They come forward to start doing. These are the super achievers and high performers in firm. A company will tag you as an average if you do what you are supposed to do. You will be an extra ordinary person if you do what you were not assigned to do but you did it along with your regular work!
4. Breaks:
Believe me. Mumbai makes you Robot. Morning local of 7:40. Evening local of 7:15, same alarm time in morning, same route, same sharing auto/cab, coffee break time and so on. Everything is on tick of the clock. Mind takes 3 months to adapt to a particular environment. In following this super steady routine, vast possibility to explore things diminishes as we are not utilizing brain at its fullest. As per scientific research, when brain struggles to find a way out or is alert, it opens. Hence its very essential to take little long unplanned breaks out of Mumbai. In case you don’t get frequent leaves, try taking short projects out of Mumbai which will again make you alive and alert, expanding brain utilization. To feel the singularity in life of people, just stand at any station.
Happienss is when your Partner hugs you and say it was a pleasure working with You !
