Hello Again Mumbai! Fun Facts We’ve Learned Along the Way

By Chris Ezekiel, Founder & CEO

Creative Virtual is opening new offices in Mumbai, India – a prime epicentre of business and culture that provides grand new opportunities for us and bolsters our international presence. India is also strategically important to us as it’s where we’ve based our product development function. We have a strong local team there under the leadership of Rohit Shrivastava, who brings over two decades of experience in the industry to the position. In July we deployed our first intelligent virtual agent in India, a momentous event celebrated by the entire company. I’ve traveled to India on several occasions and am excited to be visiting the country again this week to meet with the team and attend our launch event on Friday. For those of you who may not know much about Mumbai, here are a few fun facts that you might not have known about this wonderful city.

  1. Mumbai used to be called Bombay until 1995.
  2. Mumbai is India’s largest city and is on track to be the world’s most populated city by the year 2020 rivalling Tokyo. As the commercial and entertainment capital of India, it generates 5% of its GDP.Mumbai
  3. Mumbai is known for the Super Dense Crush Load referring to their overly crowded trains transporting more than 6 million commuters during peak hours. They even have a special railway just for women called The Ladies Specialto help them avoid the Super Dense Crush.
  4. Mumbai likes to party celebrating a host of festivals from Diwali to Good Friday to the Ganesh Chaturthi. In fact, the Bandra Fair, a week long fair commemorating the Nativity of Mary begins 9th September this year.
  5. Cricket is the most popular sport followed by football (or soccer to our American readers) and derby races. It boasts 2 cricket stadiums where they hosted the 2011 World Cup.
  6. Bollywood (a blend of Bombay and Hollywood) was born in Mumbai which cranks out 150-200 films per year.
  7. Mumbai is built on what was once an archipelago of seven islands.

The past few years have marked new milestones as we add offices across the globe. So where can you find Creative Virtual? Our headquarters are in the UK with offices and partnerships in Australia, North America, Netherlands, Singapore, and as you know, India. We’ll be adding a few other territories in the near future so stay tuned. We’re popping up virtually everywhere!