Day 4: of mock pitch, profound thinking and bizarre food!

It was a bright, sunny morning and as per our routine, we all headed out to the Zhejiang University campus.
And on my way to this beautiful venue where our sessions were going to be held,

I noticed a few students happily clicking photographs with their graduation gowns on and for a minute or two my space cadet tendencies kicked in and all the memories of my three blissful years of engineering, the highs, and lows, precious moments with my friends, the joy of having chosen as a Melton Fellow and also the fact that I just had one more year left in my course and soon I would be in their shoes, making memories all the way,  but soon the mild, trickling sound of a bike shook me back into reality and I walked further to join my group.

Our first speaker Mr.Zhou was an artificial intelligence scientist. Considering that this was a talk by an eminent personality, discussions, and tidbits of chatter filled up the auditorium and once this slide came up, the din diminished gradually!

We all had the notion that being graduate students or older, we have a very good understanding of  Artificial Intelligence because seems like every other application we come across and every tech news one reads has an AI air to it!

What we fail to see is that an understanding stems from a rudimentary attitude of respecting and considering different perspectives, no matter how basic or tacit it might sound and this talk helped us realize the significance of the same.

Starting from the basic definition of AI and giving it an entrepreneurial direction kept us hooked. He spoke about popular portals such as AirBnB, Uber, WeChat all of which use the sensor to create new data input and develop a business model out of it, be it the push to talk feature or the camera for a virtual tour. One of the most interesting aspects he touched upon was the timing of technology!

For example, if the GPS technology became prominent a year earlier or the popular Share Bikes idea had cropped up a year later perhaps the outreach of this new business model would have been quicker and larger! Because accurate GPS system coupled with a good battery life (when the bike is parked) becomes very pivotal to the entire business. And we could not agree more!

Next, we had a session by Frances Du, who spoke about the sprawling application and extensive research in the field of Deep Learning and why China is the place to be for a business opportunity with a good market!

Her talk address three important questions  Why AI? Why China? Why now?  Although AI technology was known over sixty years ago, it is now that much of the research and concrete outcomes which were only shown in sci-fi movies is being realized as there is a potential for it to automate and simplify repetitive and eerily, certain creative tasks! In China, a new policy has been decreed which favors early stage investment wherein once the investor invests, the share amount cannot be decreased further,  keeping in mind the financial interests of the umpteen number of entrepreneurial endeavors that rise each day in China.

To answer the last question she explains niftily saying, The dream of every investor is to invest in a company just before it takes off ! and seeing that there are so many ready on the runway, now is the right time to start connecting the aerobridge!

All the while we had a lot of sessions purely related to technology and some which involved business management and finance, but our next session, quite interestingly was on the powerful concept of Deep Thinking. 

Samuel Huang is the investment director for Matrix Partners, China, and his talk covered the importance of deep thinking in a time where there is the fear of people losing their jobs to artificial intelligence and there is a constant need to be creative in order to survive in the long run. Being a Venture Capitalist, a person comprehends and analyzes information of immense complexity and it becomes very easy to say no and a lot more thought goes into saying a yes!

 He spoke convincingly of how one must mold their thinking methodology when a problem is at hand and what are the certain guidelines that need to be followed and what are some of the inevitable challenges of deep thinking.

While the advancement of technology is certainly favorable, a larger portion of the human population unable to cope with this exponential integration is to be curbed and deep thinking is one of the better ways out of this labyrinth.

After some educative sessions and discussion later, we all headed out for a quick lunch and while everyone else was certainly excited to try out new dishes, my appetite seemed to diminish and sink in. But that day I had the most wholesome meal of my entire trip and in the process I also got to know that there was another Chinese delegate who herself did not like the taste of meat and hence had settled for a delicious bowl of tomato, egg, mushroom and tapioca noodles and I could not wait to gorge on mine! Yummilicious...

In the afternoon we had a field visit and then in the night, our mock pitch presentation and all the groups had huddled up during lunch for a quick discussion. On the way to our bus, we stopped at the supermarket of the campus( Wow! right?) where I discovered some bizarre food items since I could not experiment with the spice I relied on my sweet tooth! And voila, this is what I got to eat...

Nope, it is not peas!!

 

It is a green bean flavored ice-cream!!

It was rather creamy, mildly sweet and extremely soothing, makes me want to have one right now.

We all got on our bus and headed towards the office of GetUI, a company which initially was into power chargers, now developed APIs for data analytics and is used by a lot of tech companies in China.

Wait! What is this photo doing here? Looks rather clumsy, but look closer!

Yes!!! it is a Tesla car. While we are all waiting for one of those to zoom past us on our beautiful Indian roads, I luckily caught one stuck in a traffic jam and then a better picture later on.

 Not that big a fan of the automobile industry, but I shall say it anyway, Ooh! Classy!

There is also this beautiful artwork which I took some time to realize was of Steve Jobs.

A former ASES member and husband of Jennifer Zhang, an angel investor and a former ASES member herself, Mr. Fang Yei spoke about his journey as a member, how it served as a matchmaker for him and Jennifer, some funny moments! His journey as the founder of GetUI  and some of the massive, time sensitive applications and analysis, especially during disasters such as floods, stampedes and the challenges and innovation that needed to be brought in when it came to analysing the repercussions of the one child policy which caused a disproportionate ratio of marriable girls and boys in China leading to international alliances and many more such interesting insights!

What I had noticed by then was that the Chinese people love their family and having a happy, healthy family is a top priority for a person and this picture which actually shows the time of the day where there is a peak in smartphone users and how it varies over 24 hrs is actually inspired by a painting which his daughter and him randomly painted one day.

And this painting still hangs on the wall of his office space!

Barbecue baby!!

We then enjoyed a sumptuous spread of salads, fruits, drinks, vegetable and of course the non-vegetarian barbecue on a rooftop and it was the most amazing thing ever!

As a vegetarian, this is the most varied quantity of dishes I got to eat there; two different kinds of mushrooms, tofu, peppers, brinjal, corn and lots of salad and confectionaries! And the seasoning did the trick of turning these raw veggies to something delicious and I realized what hyggye actually meant!

We then had to get back to our hotel for our mock pitch presentation and I caught some witty, hilarious pictures at the office that caught my eye.

After an hour long journey back to the hotel, we realized we needed to get some caffeine before our presentation, so a few of us headed to the Chinese counterpart of Starbucks- Mi Tea.

The hip,happening and trendy place where some cool kids were sipping tea and chatting while a few others were preparing for their Gaokao! Did I even leave India? I wondered sometimes.

One look at the menu, two focused reading readings of the menu, one would not know what to order because the flavours are so different and cheese flavored oolong tea is supposedly the favorite and I thought it was worth trying.

Looks as tempting as a mug of beer, doesn't it? Well, they say Don't judge a book by its cover.

After drinking the salty, cheese flavored tea, I'd say Do not trust the "fad" when it comes to choosing your poison. On the other hand, I do not completely regret tasting it, after all the cheese was drained out, the tea per se as is the famous Hangzhou Oolong tea was pretty tasty!

One quote that stuck with me for the day was,

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I guess it is up to us to go the distance or speed the journey...