Enrich Knowledge, Broaden View
Mentor: Wei Zhao, Senior president, Fujian Apex Software Co.,Ltd
Mentee: Gary Wang Raja Sekhar Upputuri
My mentor, Zhao Wei, the vice president of Fujian Apex Software, and I have a lot in common: we are both from Fuzhou, we both like tea, and we are both in the software industry. Thus, we get matched soon in the bidding period of mentoring program.
The first I saw Wei was in the kick-off meeting of mentoring program. We exchanged our contacts and confirmed the attendance before that meeting because I thought the first impression was very important and mentors were usually busy.
Wei has two mentees: me and famous Raja. He seldom speaks English and Raja’s Chinese is not very good, so after the initial introduction I acted as the interpreter between them. Raja was also from software industry so the topics we talked about really interested me. We discussed the situation in Indian and Chinese software industry. The most interesting topic to me was how to apply the knowledge we learned from MBA to real world. Wei told us that we should have solid basic knowledge of management: the more basic the more useful the knowledge is, such as economics and accounting. I believe this suggestion will be valuable to all students. Wei was the co-founder of Apex Software and he always encourages us to start our own business if possible. Raja felt very interested in this topic because his family owns a business in Indian. However, Raja wanted to start his own business after graduation and shared his treasured idea with us. Wei told Raja that he knows a team in Beijing had handled similar project and he could introduced that team to Raja if possible in the future. Wei suggested Raja that a good team is a must for start-up because good team is a guarantee for well operation and attractive to potential venture capital. I really hope Raja can realize his dream. However, the last surprise was that Wei has broad knowledge in finance and security industry. Apex software is specialized in software for security industry, that’s why Wei is familiar with financial know-how. I was so regretful that my English was not good enough to translate all the information to Raja. In the end, we exchanged MSN, a very convenient tool for future communication. After the meeting, our primary communication was online messenger.
The second time I met with Wei was in winter break. I visited Wei’s company in my hometown, Fuzhou. Wei introduced the current situation and development strategy of company and told me that Shanghai branch will start to operate soon. Our conversation was more relaxed thanks to previous communication. We discussed the operation, marketing and HR management of Apex software. I learned a lot from these real cases. After the case, Wei shared his experience of EMBA with me: he found that the more he learned the more prudent he was because there were so many excellent students in CEIBS. I would like to share this point with my MBA classmates. Finally, we talked about tea. Wei was an expert in Chinese tea and he was very familiar with black tea such as Tieguanyin and Dahongpao. Before leaving, I got a pot of tea as gift. I told Raja about this visit when coming back to Shanghai. Raja felt a little bit angry and warned me that I inform him about every possible event with mentor.
The most valuable thing we have learned from mentor is his knowledge and view. Wei has broad industry knowledge, mostly from real cases of his friends.
