It takes a special kind of person to get out of his or her comfort zone and work towards a new, solid goal. But in 1st year of MBA at IIM K, Akriti and her team decided to do just that. With classes, summer placement prep, resume verification, pre placement talks, projects, etc., Akriti and her team decided to participate in the TBLA case competition. One of the only 2 teams participating from 1st year, they ended up becoming national winners of TBLA 2018. This attitude sees Akriti become a part of InsideIIM's Best 50 - India's Most Employable Graduates of The Class of 2018-20. Read to find out her story!
The following is Akriti Srivastava’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, Akriti’s story and profile stood out. Here's her own story in her own words.
“Since childhood my parents have stressed on teaching me the values of persistence and humility which would empower me both professionally and personally. Belonging to a small district, I have closely observed the grievances of the less endowed people around me. I always aspire to gain knowledge which I can leverage while channelizing my strengths towards betterment of the less fortunate sections of the society. I intend to strive hard to ensure education for all without barriers. I believe emotional intelligence is one of my biggest strengths which has helped me in building connections and relationships with people. The best of the partnerships do not happen within the four walls of the office/class but happens when dealt with emotionally.”
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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.
“Every b-school participant would agree to the fact that in a b-school, ‘initial months of the curriculum’ and ‘comfort’ seem to be an oxymoron.This is about the time when I decided to take a risk which could have badly impacted my summer placements in the 1st year of my b-school, IIM Kozhikode. Like in any other IIM, the first three months were full of stress and anxiety to bag the finest summer placements. Amid many placement sessions and company ppts, I and 2 of my friends got intrigued by some of the prestigious case competitions launched on campus, TBLA (Tata Business Leadership Awards) being one of them.
Approaching dates of summers and maximum participation in any case competition by the second year students did not deter us from making a whole hearted attempt at TBLA’s campus round. We as a team worked throughout the day for classes, multiple project submissions, placements ppts, processes for resume verification etc. and used to spend sleepless nights to crack the case for TBLA. When we were hopeless that our sincerest submission couldn’t match up to the submissions of PGP-2 students due to their experience and 2 years’ pedagogy they underwent, we became the campus winners of TBLA’18 from IIM Kozhikode.
Preparing for the TBLA case for the national round wasn’t easy as well, since we were competing with around 10 other IIMs and premier b-schools. We stayed relentless in our efforts, abandoned the post summer-placement relaxation and kept on working. On D-day the fact that we were one of the only 2 first year teams among the national finalists boosted our morale and had gained special appreciation from the judges. The moment our team was declared national winner, suddenly all the sleepless nights really paid off. Our indomitable spirit to overcome challenges and going out of comfort to bring the best outcome came from each of us. It was a team’s victory for sure, but it brought a lot of satisfaction to myself at being able to go beyond my comfort zone to ace it.”
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
"Selfless deeds do give a lot of satisfaction to oneself and I had experienced one such incident while I was working after graduation in Mumbai. The house help of our flat came from an economically deprived class but she was very optimistic for the future of her daughter. Her daughter used to spend most of the time at our house studying but often had to jeopardize her school hours to help her mother with all the chores thus fighting through poverty.
One day, I got to know that mother-daughter became the victims of verbal abuse by the maid's alcoholic husband. Owing to the financial and family trouble in their family, I felt deeply agonized and decided to do my bit for them, especially the daughter who was a brilliant student. My flatmates and I decided to make her daughter stay in our house till her exams were over and let the parents resolve their family matter. I helped the girl to study all subjects, clarifying her doubts and making arrangements for her comfortable stay and study. Not only did she show a remarkable performance in her final class 12th exams, but also decided to pursue B.A. and continued her studies. This was a small initiative but very satisfying because the girl agreed to not quit her exams and studies and now, she has embarked on another journey in academics.”
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
“While handling positions of responsibility there have been multiple instances where persuasion was required to bring all the team members on the same page in case of a disagreement.
In one situation at my post engineering job, our team encountered a major hurdle when a particular target file was not loaded onto the client's server and delay in any target file meant a huge impact on the client’s business. The scenario was unprecedented as the file upload software had been functional for a long duration. The team and the client concluded that the problem lay in the development code and it needed to be redone.
Since the client was critical and the deadline was close, I took the initiative and looked into the issue proactively. I was confident about the file upload software at our end. I suspected the issue was somewhere in the downstream process due to which the file was not getting delivered to the client system. In order to persuade the client that the technical fault is not of our team, I asked him to arrange a call involving all the concerned parties of the upstream and downstream process. During the 8-hour intensive call that I led from our team, I looked into the issue, discussed with the parties and figured out the reason. It not only saved the team’s valuable time to rework on the development, but also pacified the client who thought the issue existed in our development work.”
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?
“There is one field subject which is often neglected in general life is the peace of mind. We tend to forget about the importance of relaxation while chasing for success which has often led to disturbed sleep, health and depression among many people. After getting into IIM, I had suffered through the similar disturbed sleep patterns which motivated me to study about the importance of sleep hygiene and mistakes we have been making while compromising with our relaxation.
The subject of mental relaxation is not much talked about especially when it comes to the relentless life of a corporate person. For the past many months, I have developed interest in the field of brain relaxation techniques, sleep hygiene and everything about it. Just reading about it and doing nothing would not do good to the people who suffer from anxiety (30% suffer from occasional insomnia in India. In this study cohort, 18.6% reported insomnia. A higher prevalence of sleep disorders related to initiation and maintenance of sleep (28%) was reported in an urban population). Though not a professional approach, I have started educating my friends about the importance of these two and techniques for better sleeping patterns after inquiring about their lifestyle and work schedule. I am very sure to take up this issue of mental relaxation and discuss it in schools as well so that the students can be educated about it.”
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?
“Since it is a huge corpus it needs to be well utilized/invested. It will be a wise decision to put money in good use and not use it entirely in a personal capacity. Hailing from a tier-3 district, coming from a family of medical professionals and doctors, having pursued my engineering and MBA from premier institutes of India, I believe I have experienced that India provides a plethora of opportunities in which we can invest judiciously:
Education: In December 2016, Union Minister for Human Resource Development Shri Prakash Javadekar, in reply to a question raised in Lok Sabha had informed that in India at the Elementary level, 17.51% posts for government teachers were vacant and for Secondary level, 14.78% posts were vacant. Statistics tell that to boost up the education, new technologies should be used to compensate for age-old teaching methodology. Through increasing usage of the internet, ed-tech startups are making ripples in rural areas. In order to educate children and especially women in the rural areas, special content can be curated which does not include old conventional technology. I would like to invest some portion of the money in such Ed tech startups.
Sanitation and Hygiene: As per statistics, In rural India, 70% households do not have a toilet. Only 11 per cent of the Indian rural families dispose of child stools safely. Many initiatives like Zila Swachh Bharat Prerak Programme by TATA ensure to make districts in India defecation free by building more toilets. The condition of sanitation is still deplorable and a vast amount can be spent in this domain.
Investment in agriculture: Pandemic like Corona taught all of us that agriculture will remain the lifeline even when other sectors take a plunge. The farmers who took a hit when the supply chain got hampered during lockdown, it becomes necessary to protect their produce. Investing in agritech startups, a wide variety of services can be provided to farmers – from providing farming equipment at affordable prices, to ensuring crop protection.
Hospital and medical facilities: India ranks 145 among 195 countries in healthcare access and quality, which shows a very saddening situation. I would definitely want to have some share of the corpus going to the hospitals working in rural areas. Many tier 2 & 3 hospitals are lacking necessary advanced equipment like phototherapy equipment which are needed in treatment of the babies. With this huge corpus, I would definitely make an investment in providing such equipment and facilities required.
Some funds for investments/Some savings: I will definitely want to save 10-20% of the money for better future purposes. Investing in debt and equity instruments will be one of the ways. I would be investing in stocks, index funds and mutual funds. Some of the portion can be invested in high liquidity and low liquidity funds too like gold, debt funds etc.”
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