A friend in need is a friend indeed. Our today's feature - Adarsh Ranjan takes the phrase to another extent. During his summer internship, his fellow classmate fell ill. There was a chance that she would lose grades on her project if she did not recover on time. So, he worked in the office late to work both on his project and prepare material for his friend. As soon as his friend recovered and joined the internship program, they worked hard. And guess what? They both got PPOs. Adarsh's ability to work in a team and his helpful attitude scored him a place in InsideIIM’s Best 50 Most Employable Graduates of the Class of 2020.
The following is Adarsh Ranjan's set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top-50 most employable MBA graduates of the Class of 2020. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated by the Founder of InsideIIM-Kampus Konversations, Adarsh’s story and profile stood out. Here's a little about him, in his own words.
"I am a management graduate from MDI Gurgaon, class of 2020. I have pursued mechanical engineering from BT Mesra, Ranchi. I have worked with large manufacturing conglomerates such as Mahindra and Mahindra and Tata Steel. I will join ICICI Bank at Management Trainee this year. I am a car enthusiast, I like to read about the latest happenings in the automobile sector. I have a knack for solving puzzles and challenging problems. I have won more than 5 management case study competitions at the national level. I am also an active blogger at InsideIIM with more than 20 articles live right now."
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.
"During the second year of engineering, once during an interaction with the security guard of our hostel, I realised the abysmal state of elementary education in the neighbouring villages around the college. I was deeply appalled by listening to the story of this humble man who worked days and nights at stretch to be able to provide for his family yet despite his most sincere efforts lack of adequate resources might push his children into an uncertain future due to poor education. I discussed this some of my closest friends on campus and all of us agreed to fix this situation. We spoke to our security guard again to accompany him to his village and visit the government school there to see how things were and how we could help in making things better. It was the first time I had been to a village and it had a great impact on me to see the austere lifestyle of the villagers and despite their miseries, all the people we met were welcoming and cheerful and treated us with whatever they could arrange for us. After coming back to college we decided on our way forward. The second year of engineering was packed with lectures and lots of course work to be submitted every other class, moreover, the companies would be conducting tests for selecting students for the internships so it was high time all students were preparing for the tests. After a long discussion, finally, three of us including myself agreed to teach the rural students and help them with their studies pro bono. We thanked the security guard profusely for taking us with him to his village and allowing us to interact with the people. We requested him to arrange for the students from nearby houses, as many as he could so we could teach them. We started with the classes. The beginning was a little difficult, the security guard was kind enough to spare a room for us to conduct our classes, we pooled in some money to buy a whiteboard and markers and finally, the classes began. We started with a small batch of about 6 students but soon the word got around and we had nearly 40 students attending the classes in about a month. As the students differed widely in age, we made three batched so that we could be more focussed in teaching the relevant content to them and it also became possible for us to pay more attention to the learning of each individual. As the classes went on the students’ aptitude improved and the performance in the tests conducted at school also improved. Just around the time, board exams came and we spent a lot more time with the students who were in standard 10 and 12 respectively. We used to connect with them continuously before and after each exam to ensure that they were comfortable and well prepared for each exam. After a few months, the time for results finally came and we had our moment of truth. All the students passed with flying colours, many of them surpassing all expectations and performance by students in the past. We were elated and took all the students out for a treat but when we returned, it dawned upon us that If just the three of us could make a difference to the lives of so many students, what would happen if we would be able to get help from more such like-minded people to help us in our noble venture. We also felt the need to make this much more sustainable and not something which would end as we stepped out of college so with the help of more students and the support of the national service scheme of the government of India, we were able to scale up in the succeeding two years and now teaching the poor kids is a regular activity for all the students who are part of the national service scheme student chapter of BIT Mesra. It still brings back some wonderful memories to think about stepping out of our comfort zones to help the needy children and make a difference in their life."
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
"During MBA, one of the most grilling months were those of our internship, during this time, one of my friends got severely sick and couldn’t attend work but owing to the paucity of time, I realised that her project might get screwed if she’s not able to recover on time. As I was constantly in touch with her, I had a decent idea about her project. I paid her a visit to check on her health and reassured her that she’ll be fine, it was only a matter of time till she got well. She was very much worried that her project might suffer due to her ill health, I talked to her and got the details about her project especially the part of her work which might get stuck as she was not able to attend the internship. From the next day onwards, it dawned upon me that I could not let someone down who was relying on me for help, I started working up late in the office to cover for both of us and as she recovered, her project was in good shape, and she came back and joined office. We prepared well for our final review presentations, eventually, both the presentations went well and both of us bagged PPO at the end of the internship."
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
"During engineering, I was the secretary of the hostel and mess committee and I was also the hostel representative. The mess used to serve both veg as well as non-veg food. There were no restrictions so far as the quantity of food was concerned. This had two major issues - first, it led to a lot of wastage as the number of people having food at mess varied every day and there was no mechanism in place for the mess workers to know the actual number of people who would be attending mess on a particular day, the other problem was that of disproportionate billing. Although different people consumed a different amount of food, the bill was evenly split among all the students. This was an age-old methodology and it was a well-accepted practice among the hostel administration staff but it was highly unpopular among the students and it was the long-standing bone of contention between the students and the hostel administration. As the secretary of the hostel and mess committee, I was determined to fix this and ensure fair costing for the students, I pitched the idea to the hotel warden and the dean of student affairs but they resisted citing reasons that the hostel administration was already burdened by a lot of work and it would not be possible for them to keep track of each and every student and bill them accordingly. I was taken aback, I had expected their cooperation and support in fixing something which the student community had perceived as wrong for a fairly large time. Nevertheless, I did not give up. I made certain observations over a period of two months and presented my findings to the vice-chancellor of our college. He was elated at my hard work and he promised full cooperation and support in the implementation of the coupon system for availing food in hostel mess. After getting acceptance from the vice-chancellor, I arranged for a joint meeting with the hostel warden and the dean of student affairs. This time since I had orders from the vice-chancellor, they agreed to implement a coupon based food system in mess and it was implemented in the very next month itself. After the implementation of the coupon system, the students were very happy due to the transparency in the billing system and there was a sharp decline in the amount of food which got wasted."
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 which has led you to do deep work in that field?
"I have professional expertise in MS Excel. Till date, I have created more than 20 dynamic dashboards for different businesses which help them in monitoring various aspects of their businesses as per their requirements. These dashboards have been made as part of multi-disciplinary projects involving metrics from all management domains - operations, sales and marketing, finance, and HR. I am currently exploring more powerful data visualisation tools such as Python and R. I aspire to study machine learning and data science and gain a much better understanding of both to these and their application in the domain of Human Resource Management."
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?
"With such a huge corpus, I would like to plan for maximising my net worth, in the long run, my minimising my liabilities and maximising assets. First and foremost, I would clear all my debt which would be meagre amount compared to the corpus at hand but it will get me rid of the financial liabilities. With the corpus that I have left, first and foremost, I will invest in securing my future against the major risks, I will buy insurance for the family members and self and all of my significantly valuable assets to face any adversity which may come about unannounced in future. Out of the remaining corpus, I will invest 20% in low risk or risk-free instruments which can easily be liquidated should I need the money at any time such as government bonds, liquid funds or debt instruments which offer both security and good return as well as liquidity. I would invest the other 20% in instruments which are safe and lead to some sort of perpetual income but are a little more difficult to liquidate such as real estate and fixed deposits. I may use the perpetual income which I get from these amounts to set up charitable trusts which will help in creating a better world in the future and help in the upliftment of the society by catering to the needs of the poor people. I will invest the remaining 60% in equity-based instruments in the long run so as to gain out of the growth of the equity markets. At this moment, I have just begun to invest and understand the various investment interments and stock trading so I would prefer to invest in equities under the guidance of a well-reputed financial advisor to gain in the long run. The investments in equity-based instruments will be done and left to grow for a long time of 10-15 years during which time, I will work extensively on creating a business plan, creating a vast network of influential people and ding the necessary groundwork and due diligence before launching my own venture. At the end of 10-15 years, I will withdraw the money from the equity instruments in small instalments as seed investment for my business and work full time in growing the business and attracting more investors for the same."
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