On the eve of International Women’s Day, women associates of Satven headed to Dream Valley, a resort on the outskirts of Hyderabad city.

The women power was in full flow which was evident as they enjoyed few activity-rich hours of adventure sports. They made merry playing water sports, rain dancing and other games besides indulging in photo sessions during the day.

Project managers and department heads were accompanied by their spouses to celebrate the event. We all know our female associates work smart and hard. They just revealed another less known side – they can party harder.

Karthika Masam is the most auspicious month as per Hindu philosophy. It signifies the period of Sadhana – i.e. practice for enlightenment. Since practice by humans for enlightenment insists on purification; this month is chock-a-block with activities aimed at achieving purity of body, mind & soul.

One such activity is to be close to nature with trees & greenery, connect with mother earth, and celebrate this gift of God together.

In our endeavor to achieve this objective, we had organized a “Vana Bhojanalu” event on the 26th of November 2016 (Saturday) for our associates at Hyderabad. This was followed by an Open House session in which there was very lively interaction between the management team and the associates.

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) is celebrated on 9 January every year to mark the contribution of Overseas Indian community in the development of India.

January 9 was chosen as the day to celebrate this occasion since it was on this day in 1915 that Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Pravasi, returned to India from South Africa, led India’s freedom struggle and changed the lives of Indians forever.

The PBD convention attracts overseas Indians from all over the world. More than 3000 delegates participated in the PBD in January 2017 in Bangalore. The PBD Convention features Plenary Sessions; an Exhibition; Cultural programmes and provides an opportunity to interact with other Overseas Indians, Policy makers, Political leadership and others and also to explore opportunities to invest in India.

Satven had set up a stall at the PBD 2017 event in Bangalore.

Our honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had walked past the Satven stall on his tour of the exhibition.

Ajaysingh Goutam, Param Iyer, Srinivasan TR and Novi TP had participated in the event.

As part of our associate connect & people development initiatives, Sridhar Lakshminarayanan, conducted a near full-day session on “Customer for Life” concepts & “Deutschland-specific Cultural Orientation” in our offsite center in Munich on October 15 2016.

A quiz was conducted & relevant awareness points, restaurant etiquette, and several tips for building bridges with Germans were passed on.

It was an interactive & lively session, with nearly 100% of our associates working in the Munich area in attendance.

Jose Xavier & Ramesh Naradasu made the session even more worthwhile for our onsite engineers & coordinators with their inputs & suggestions.

The annual Ford Asian Indian Association (FAIA) Event, held in October 2016, at the Ford Performing Arts Center, was attended by Ford employees, senior executives and suppliers. FAIA celebrated its 20th year with its deep-rooted commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion within Ford Motor Company.

“Ford’s Transformation to Mobility & Automotive Business” was the theme of the annual FAIA event.

Mark Fields, President and CEO was the special guest for the evening. Raj Nair EVP & CTO, presented the keynote address and talked about the four important megatrends which are driving our thinking around mobility and the enablers. He also shared some of the enabling technologies that convinced the employees that now is absolutely the right time to transition from being just an auto company to being an auto AND mobility company.

SATVEN is proud to be associated with FAIA and sponsored for the FAIA T-Shirt commemorating the 20th anniversary of FAIA.

With a view to future proofing our organization, we at Satven have been taking up several initiatives to foster the culture of innovation. One such initiative is conducting innovation workshops & related events every month.

We have already conducted two “Innovation Days” in Hyderabad (end of August & end of September 2016). Both events saw an overwhelming response from our associates.

We have since started extending this to other global locations. . Venkat Yenduri (who has been leading this initiative along with Siva Subramanian) was in our offsite center in Munich on October 21 2016, to conduct the first German “Innovation Day”.

Venkat provided insights into sources of innovation, design thinking, innovation frameworks such as Business Canvas Model, Customer Development & Customer Discover. They also encouraged associates to come up with ideas to future proof our organization. The response was overwhelming & several ideas were generated for subsequent review by the Innovation Committee.