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, Ajay Yadav, has shown an incredible amount of passion to achieve his true potential. Read on and find out his story!
The following are Ajay Yadav’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, Ajay'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.
I belong from a humble financial background. Like every other JEE aspirant, I had also aimed for the top IIT/NITs, but destiny had different plans. I decided to turn this minor setback into success. During my undergrad, I was constantly ranked among the top 5 in my branch. I was part of various technical and cultural societies and held various POR. While I was always heavily bent towards tech, this exposure intrigued my interest in the managerial side of processes. During the placements, I was among the top 3 people of my batch who secured the highest package. After working for 2 years in core tech, I decided to leave my high-paying, stable job and venture into understanding the business in detail through MBA. This was the time when the world was impacted by Corona virus, and the market was highly volatile. Against all advice, I chose my passion over monetary aspects. When I look back today, I feel that I made the right choice, although it was a big risk at the time. Each day, I try to make the best use of my skills at IIM Bangalore, and I am proud to have worked on big products with Airtel & Khatabook, even before graduating.
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 the placement season in my undergrad in 2018, I was fortunate to be placed early on in the process. I used this opportunity to help my friends and fellow batchmates by starting a buddy programme to help others get placed. We, a group of 3 students, took coding sessions and mock interviews to help others prepare for their tests and interviews. We regularly kept expanding our group to include more placed students to give back to the community. This helped us with more people to compile company research for all the firms visiting campus. We divided groups of students into categories based on similar interests and assigned them the most suitable buddy. I also coordinated this whole process by sharing all the company-related details with all the students through shared drive links. This helped our friends to get placed faster and increased the bonding among the students. I am proud of the fact that those notes are still used by my peers while they prepare for interviews to switch companies.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
I was working on developing new features for a financial trading gateway and I realised there is a bug in the legacy code being used to support that feature. I created a hypothesis and presented it to the senior leadership requesting for extension in the deadline to fix the potential bug. But that code had been in the system for around 10 years, and no senior developer was in favour of changing it as it was working fine till date. I highlighted on the financial implication the bug could have caused due to the high amount of trades being executed via this gateway. Apart from several discussions with leadership, I spent multiple hours replicating the issue to focus on the possible loss.On successful replication, I presented it to the team with proof of concept and everyone verified and approved my request and gave me the ownership to release the feature to the customer end-to-end. I received an accolade for the same both from the leadership as well as the external client.
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?
In the last 4-5 years, apart from tech, I have developed a keen interest towards trekking. It started as a fun and adventure activity during my undergrad, but soon I got deeply involved in the same. I have been to more than a dozen treks and most of them are in the Himalayas. I was an active member of the adventure club of my institute and organized multiple treks and took many batches of students to various adventures. Owing to my passion, I have also written travel related blogs in my college magazine and across various online platforms. During my corporate stint, I initiated and formed a team to plan company level trips. We used to organize trips and treks for various teams and coordinate the same with multiple travel partners.I aim to pursue a Mountaineering Course post my MBA journey and keep climbing more mountain ranges.
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?
My first and foremost priority would be to separate out a chunk to invest for the future of my family, after paying off my education loan. I began my MBA journey with a long-term goal of starting my own entrepreneurial venture. I will separate 40% amount from this 10 million dollars to invest in my start-up idea. I will separate a some part (~15%) for investment in the start-up space by understanding the field of venture capitals and help budding ideas with huge potential.For the leftover amount (15%), I would find an NGO doing meaningful work that I can contribute to. My personal preference would be some NGO that undertakes the responsibility of teaching young, underprivileged girls. The reason is that my grandfather was an advocate of womens education and rights, and I want to contribute to his dreams as much as I can. I would engage with them regularly, both financially and to the best of my capacity, to teach the girls.
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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?
Find out here!