In our list of India's Best 50 - the 50 Most Employable Students from the Class of 2021-23, we feature MBA students who have walked that extra mile and done that little more to stand out! One of those featured in today's story, Aayushman Chakraborty, has shown an incredible amount of passion to achieve his true potential. Read on and find out his story!
The following are Aayushman Chakraborty’s set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top 50 Most Employable MBA Graduates of the Class of 2022. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated, Aayushman's story and profile stood out. Here's his story in his own words.
Name an instance where you wanted something and went out of your comfort zone to achieve it OR Tell us the biggest risk you have taken so far in your life.
As a person with a learning disability (dyslexia) competitive exams (especially in India), have always been something out of my comfort zone. These exams have been standardized way too much so it's really hard for anyone whose brain functions even a little differently to perform well in these exams. However, an MBA from a good college is something I wanted to do since my undergrad, and the covid situation made going abroad problematic. Hence to pursue my dreams of doing an MBA I had to do it in India for which I had to give CAT to get into good colleges. To pursue my dreams I had to step out of my comfort zone and prepare for a competitive exam, I had to train and push my brain to function and react in a way that was expected to perform well. However 2 years later, as a student at IIM-C, Im glad I pushed myself out of that comfort zone.
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
While I believe no act can actually be truly selfless (will argue even an act that doesn't benefit directly, will mostly make you feel good, and hence it's not selfless) closest to a selfless act would be teaching the underprivileged. In my 11th grade, I had the option, rather the privilege, to teach the 10th-standard kids at a public school in my locality, as their teacher left, before the boards due to a medical condition. I was supposed to teach them physics but as their exams were around the corner my job was mainly to help clarify their doubts, obviously, this job was not paid as I was not a trained teacher, so in that sense this job was selfless. However, this job brought me a lot of satisfaction, especially when one student came to my place with his parents after the results and credited his passing to me. This satisfaction made me continue doing this selfless act in the future as well. During my undergrad, I would help kids at the government school with their doubts over the weekend. There are a lot of students out there who have the desire and curiosity to learn but unfortunate circumstances don't give them the same opportunities we have, while teaching them can be called selfless, I believe the satisfaction it brings us is worth more than an increased grade in college.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
While I was working as a product manager at a real money gaming firm I disagreed with the existing commission model. I believed my model would be better not only for the users but will also help increase revenue. Obviously, since I was trying to change the industry standard my CEO and other CXOs were against my idea, they believed (since we were a smaller firm in the market) if we move away from the industry standard, we will lose customers. I had the math to back my claim, however, that wasn't enough. I was finally able to convince my CTO to let me AB test my model against the existing, on the condition that I will personally stay in touch with all the users affected by the test (the benefit of being a PM, is I could test my model without it affecting all users). We ran the AB test (non-random pre-selected groups) for 6 weeks, where I carefully monitored the data changes and personally dealt with the users' issues. After 6 weeks the data confirmed my math and the CXOs agreed to make the change. More interestingly 2.5 months after we made the change the market leaders made the same change and then the rest followed, in less than 9 months the market standard had changed, because my CTO supported me when I disagreed (perks of working at a small start-up I guess).
What is the one thing you can claim to have some level of expertise or depth of knowledge in - it could be anything - a subject, a sport, a hobby, a venture, an initiative that has led you to do deep work in that field?
Poker - started as a way to spend time back in high school, and became a game I went on to play semi-professionally before I started my MBA. Back in 2012 when I was in 8th grade I started playing poker on Zynga as it allowed me to compete with my friends. Back then it was just a game we played with little thought, with the aim to kill time and win more than our friend (so we could top the leaderboards). My love for the fun game made me take a course on poker in my undergrad which made me realize the skill elements of the game. That one course invoked curiosity which led me to study the game (right from calculating EVs to face reading to complex betting strategies) for almost 2 years before I started playing the game semi-professionally. My love for the game also pushed me to work in the industry (I worked as a product manager at an online poker firm) hence, I would like to believe poker is one field in which I have a depth of knowledge.
If 10 Million Dollars (approximately INR 75 Crores) is given to you to use it any way you deem fit what would you do with this corpus?
20% - Invest in myself, as I used to play poker semi-professionally and I believe I am skilled at it, I will use 20% as a bankroll to get back to poker. 40% - Create a fund to be an angle investor of sorts. Invest in startups/ideas/people, especially in young Indians who have bizarre ideas and are struggling to get their initial funding. As 10M is a very small corpus for investing in later rounds, I would like to help Indians at their angel stages.20% - Invest in medium-risk mutual funds or other medium-risk bonds/options, so it can be a backup cash reserve for the future. 20% - Give it to my parents, I believe my parents have been my biggest support system throughout, hence I will like to give back a part to them.
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As per government tax payers' data and our assessment, only about 6,00,000 Indian taxpayers earn an annual 'salaried' income of INR 30 lacs or above. And only 11,00,000 Indian taxpayers earn a 'total' income of INR 30 lacs or more.
Have you ever considered how much time it would take for you to be amongst these top 0.5% earners in India?
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