Nag and I landed in Mumbai at 9AM today to attend SalesForce Advantage Tour conference, being held at Grand Hyatt. Today our cab driver was Mariappan Nadar, from Chennai, living in Mumbai for a decade or more.  I told him I have 2 hrs free time in the morning as the conference was starting at Noon, and 3 hrs in the evening as my flight was past 10PM, and asked him to take me and Nag to take around few places where we can take few pics or check out any popular places, and most importantly have vada pav at legendary places.

I read him TOP 10 Vada Pav places from Trip Advisor, and asked him to take one of them which is close to the airport.   He took us for a spin on Sea Worli link and Siddivinayak Temple in the morning.  He came again at end of the conference, and took us Taj Land’s End, where there is Bandra Fort and SRK Home Mannat, and stopped us at a vada pav centre.

I said to Mariappan, I do not have old or new currency for fare.  He said, transfer to his account when I go home.   He was not in a rush or seemed worried about delayed payment option.  He was looking for long term strategic relationship with me, and potentially looking for repeat business.  Then I opened Axis Bank mobile app, and created his payment account.  Normally, AXIS mandates 8 hrs wait period, before one can initiate a transfer.  I guess due to current demonetization issue, it let me transfer cab fare to him instantly.  I am sure to call Mariappan for next time, when I am in town.

Salesforce Advantage Tour (a localized version of annual Dream Force event, which was held in SFO) held at Mumbai Grand Hyatt was pretty solid and was well conducted as you can see from below pics, and had several take-aways and ideas for taking it to next level at Cigniti. There were 1000 folks from SalesForce customer community (mostly from India) who attended the event.  Event is anchored by senior management of SalesForce.com (VPs and above).  Highlight of the event was presentation of customer success stories from various customers across the world. It included Capital One, Nimbi, and DunkinDonuts from NA, Bajaj FinServe and Y-Axis from India.

Format of the event was pretty unique and was of really high quality.  Customer Success stories were of high quality and high impact.  Quality of presentation from SF team with animation were of real high quality.  They have setup room which they called “Campground” where all new SF products were demonstrated and gave potential users to experience it hands-on.  They have setup another room called it as “Innovation Theatre” where new SF Topics were introduced for entire day.

In the Ball Room, they have conducted the main event with various customer success stories.  “SalesForce Einstein” (building using AI, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing) is the next big thing from SalesForce, which will bring predictability in easy to use format.