Aishwarya Varshney from MDI Gurgaon is one of India's Most Promising Incoming MBA Students 2021!
About Aishwarya Varshney: "I am Aishwarya Varshney. I belong to Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. Throughout my student life, I have excelled in academics along with active participation in extracurricular. After completing my B.Tech in CSE from KIET Ghaziabad, I worked with Indiamart as a software developer and SBI as a probationary officer. During the pandemic, I volunteered at an NGO for social welfare which significantly changed my outlook towards life. I am an affable, empathic, and tenacious person who believes in continuous self-improvement and lifelong learning. My hobbies are reading books, writing poems, gardening, and playing chess."
The following is Aishwarya Varshney's set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst incoming MBA graduates to determine the top-50 Most Promising Incoming MBA students of 2021. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated, Aishwarya's story and profile stood out. Here's her story in her words.
Tell us about a time when you messed up, and what you learnt from the experience?
The most significant challenge for me so far was the JEE Advanced exam. Physics had always been an achilles heel for me and it was the hole that sunk my IIT boat. The results came and I had missed my chance of getting into premium engineering colleges. It left me vulnerable, off balance, and drowned me in uncertainty and self-doubt. There is a quote - I hope you live a life you are proud of and if you find that you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. It was at a time like this that my constant self-awareness and critical-thinking came to my rescue. I had begun to notice the negative effects of self-denigration on my physical and mental health and I knew I had to begin working on it - even if slowly but gradually. I knew that I had to rise above this pitfall of self-doubt and self-pity as I couldnt let one setback ruin my whole career. I knew that I have the ability to grow and to take this setback as a catapult to hurl me towards better opportunities. It was after this awakening that I was constantly asking myself questions - what, why, how, when, where. I can't thank my family and friends enough. They were with me during my most vulnerable times and with their encouragement and motivation, I got into a good engineering college, upskilled myself to be a competent coder and a better human, and passed engineering with flying colors. I had finally realised that even though I may not have been where I wanted to be but I was also no longer where I used to be - and that, to me, was a real progress. The biggest challenge of my life turned out to be a solid life lesson that made me stronger somehow.
Tell us something about yourself that others may be surprised to know about you.
As a person who often puts the interest of others before my own and is happy to do something useful for someone else, I think the true strength of a person lies in the people around them and in the way they help each other out mutually. That's why one of the aspects of my personality I would like to draw your attention to is my altruism, which has helped me on a number of occasions during my life and has helped me learn many things, one of them being learning elementary sign language. Early on in my life, I was fortunate to be schooled in Siddharth International Public School as it gave me ample opportunities to develop an open mindset and be ready to go an extra mile for things that matter. My friendly and empathic nature led me to befriend a deaf-mute girl, who soon became one of the best friends I ever had. Not being able to communicate by using sound was never a barrier between us as she helped me learn sign language in order to be able to understand each other better. I would often act as a translator between her and fellow classmates or between her and teachers. Even without saying anything, she taught me many things apart from sign language - not letting the absence of something ruin the best of you, the never-say-never attitude, braving life's difficulties with head held high - to name a few, which helped me a lot in developing into a better human..
What have been your two biggest successes in life? What did you learn from them?
The biggest success in my life according to me was excelling in my class 12th board results. I had scored a 100/100 in chemistry - a feat that I never thought to have accomplished but was possible only because of my mentors - and had also topped my school. These exemplary academic results brought me appreciation from the then HRD Minister Smriti Irani mam in the form of a letter and a laptop from the then Uttar Pradesh Government, which - I am elated to let you know - is still functioning well and is being used to type the responses to the questions put forth by your esteemed panel as to why I am one of the most promising students. My next biggest success in life was to bravely face the most devastating failure in my life. Undergraduate college entrance exams are no doubt the make-or-break element of your career when it is just in its nascent stage. Entry into a premium college has the power to ease out the entry to a tumultuous professional life. But it is important to realise that it is just one aspect of ensuring success, it is not success in its entirety. As someone has rightly said, our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. To bounce back from setbacks and embarrassment, it is necessary to embrace them with head held high. Despite not getting into a tier-1 college, I am happy to see how far I have come, how much I have learnt, and how much I have developed as a person. I call it a success because while I never let success get into my head, this incident taught me not to let the failures get the best of me.
Professionally, what is your ideal image of yourself five years from now? Where do you see yourself?
I am a person of simple needs. I have never stopped upskilling myself and feeding my curiosity. So when you ask me about my career goals after five years, my answer is pretty simple. I want to continue learning while I am performing my duties. My long-term ambition is to enthusiastically work, be a valuable representative of my organisation, and make the best use of my skills and knowledge. I want to learn from a diverse portfolio of client engagements and put all of my theoretical experience into practice in a real-world environment. While I am very happy as a member of any team I will be working with, I am looking forward to being able to take on small leadership roles, eventually working my way into a position as a manager and team-leader. I have been so lucky to have been surrounded by managers and team leaders who have been generous with their knowledge and I look forward to an opportunity to become a mentor for others like me within this field. In my position, I will mentor younger generations of aspiring consultants as well as work with clients. I wish to prove myself to be an important asset for the organisation where I will be working in the future. I see myself gaining knowledge in multiple fields. I will find it to be rewarding if I am able to give my best to the different tasks I am assigned as I will be useful to the organisation in more than one way. I want to attain new heights in my career as I take forward the goals of my organisation. The years ahead of me will be full of responsibilities which need better decision making. During the course of 5-10 years, I can picture myself leading the teams which will yield better outcomes to the organisation. I look forward to developing a set of skills that will be useful in both my personal and professional growth as it will help me better grasp my long-term goals and, in the long run, contribute to the development of society as a whole. In short, I see myself happy with the work I do.
What is the one skill or characteristic you possess that you are most proud of, and why?
I pride myself on my time-management skills. I believe one of the reasons I have been able to handle diverse engagements at once is because of my good time management skills. Instead of doing several things at once, I prefer focusing on one thing at a time and finishing it before moving on to the next thing. It also involves segregating my pile of work into the categories - urgent and important and then proceeding towards their completion based on the priority. As a methodical person who likes doing things right rather than doing them fast, I believe in breaking down a big goal into small pieces and then completing them - one piece at a time - based on the priorities of these small subtasks at hand. Whatever I intend to do, I ensure to do it only after conscious planning and thoughtful decision making as it helps me stay focused and stick to my prioritized tasks rather than getting derailed by unimportant distractions. Born into a family that constantly encouraged its members to always thrive to learn and expand their horizons, this methodology has helped me a lot in experimenting with and exploring all my interests and aptitudes and acquire experience in both technical and artistic domains, thus giving me a unique perspective towards life, which is still evolving with every rotation of Earth. Throughout my student life, I have strived to maintain a good balance between my academics and extracurricular. I was one of the top students of my class in school and college, not only because of my consistent top rankings in terms of academic performance but also because of my active participation in extracurricular activities such as creative writing, public speaking, and chess. This habit of managing time skillfully also helped me a lot during my tenure at Indiamart as along with my chief task of developing codes, While performing my functional duties of a software developer and focusing on projects, I was also regularly conducting weekly tech-learning and team-building activities to foster team-cohesion. The same was noticed by my seniors at and Vice-President of Indiamart who once went out of his way to recognise my efforts in front of the whole Search Team by explicitly appreciating my efforts for relentlessly working towards a great learning and fun environment as even when the things sometimes became difficult, I stayed determined.
In your opinion, what skills or qualities does a successful manager possess?
An indispensable skill that needs to be possessed by a good manager is integrity. I call it an important skill for a manager because when one holds a powerful position, it is important to be mindful of your actions and how they can affect others and working with integrity is one sure way to ensure that. It is the quality of possessing strong ethical or moral principles and following them at all times, no matter who's watching or how tough the circumstances are. Managers with integrity are able to face tough situations with a calm state of mind and thats what makes them reliable. It is not about being perfect, but being righteous. Managers with integrity pave the way for ethical leadership. They are often the ones who are trusted with sensitive or important information that needs immediate attention because their seniors know that they have handed the task to the right person. At the same time, the subordinates of a manager with integrity never have to worry about being overshadowed or not getting due credits for their work. Hence, they are able to perform their duties with no apprehensions and give good performance to the organisation. Thus a manager with integrity helps create a thriving workplace by encouraging creativity and developing trust.
Tell us about an ethical dilemma that you may have faced, and how you resolved it.
One ethical dilemma that I faced happened during my stint at Indiamart. I had developed a feature to enhance searches in Devnagiri Script. The code was developed successfully with all good coding practices and had passed all test cases presented to us by the requesting party. However, on the day of the launch, I realised that the code failed to handle one exceptional test case, which was not even noticed by the party who requested feature development. I knew the risks it could pose to the service if we let the code go live as it were (error prone) and I was also aware of the wrath I would have to face from my manager if I told them to delay the launch of the feature (and not following due timelines). I had the choice between going ahead with the current code followed by taking everyones praise and start working on the feature, develop and test it before the office hours began, and be considered unfit for being chosen to develop that code because of not noticing it sooner. With only a few hours in my hand to fix the issue, I went ahead with developing the code to handle that scenario and tested it on my local branch. Once I was sure that nothing was left amiss, I contacted my manager and explained the whole scenario. My manager dealt with the situation pretty well and we went ahead with the latest piece of code. Later, I received praise from my Manager for my attention to details and proactive approach.
If you were the CEO of any company of your choosing, which company would you choose and what would your first action be as CEO?
If I were the CEO of any company of my choice, I would choose a company that places more emphasis on people and ideas than on money and profits. This is because I am a strong believer that great organisations are more than great buildings or great benefits. They are more about the right people with the right abilities. I would choose a company that has a tremendous potential to grow by leveraging on its human resources along with a willingness to do the same. I am an advocate of the fact that skilled, motivated, and enthused employees are the greatest asset a company can have and I dream of being a part of an organisation that values its most important resources - human. I would like to become a CEO of a company that is just as known for a great company culture, a trustworthy relationship between the employer and its employees, good work-life balance, and professional development as it is popular for reasonable salary, perks and benefits, and career growth. The employees of my company would be known by just one thing - the value they bring to the organisation, and not their caste, creed, colour, race, or even gender. In short, I would like to create a workplace that is perceived as a great place to work by producing a conducive work environment for everyone to learn, thrive, and grow.
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Check The List Of InsideIIM’s 50 Most Promising Incoming Students 2021 Here!
For the Class Of 2022, we are back with the 8th season of InsideIIM's Best 50 - India's Most Employable MBA Graduates - Class Of 2022! If you're graduating from a B-School in 2022, you're eligible to take part in this competition! Grab the chance to bring out your best side and impress your recruiters and peers. Take the opportunity to show the world why you are special, on your own terms.
If you're using a web browser (Mozilla or Google Chrome), then you can take part through this link. Otherwise, please download the Kampus App (Android | iOS), and head over to Competitions.
