My name is Sriram Ulaganathan and I am a proud student at the Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli. I graduated from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in 2015. I had a rich experience running my own start up during my graduation. Sadly I had to shut down operations after graduation due to some constraints. Around the same time a startup with a similar working idea came up and was worth millions within a couple of months. I started to analyse and look for reasons beyond my lack of time and adequate finances for my failure. I realised that the founder of the rival was from my own college but he had an additional feather in his cap. He was a management graduate from the IIMs. I began to connect the dots between him making confident and unique business decisions to his IIM tag. Hence began my thirst to join a premier IIM to hone my managerial skills and understand the intricacies and jargon used by the top CEOs.
I didn’t immediately want to jump into a business school after graduation. I wanted to work on my communication skills and learn to woo an audience. I choose to join T.I.M.E. as a faculty for quantitative aptitude, data interpretation and reasoning as these were always my strong forte. As a mentor, I was required to do depth analysis of India’s top 50 B-schools to help students understand the different colleges. During my time studying business schools, IIM Trichy caught my eye. I also found several students targeting IIM Trichy for its renowned finance placements. It was a class apart from the league of college it was incepted with. Be it placements or academics or extracurricular activities. I had a feeling that it was advancing at a furious pace. Instead of competing with its peers i.e. the other new IIMs, the institute was eying at the top position. This was clearly reflected in how the students from IIM Trichy beat even the old IIMs and won at national level competitions. Looking into the social media handle of the college clubs and committees I realised that this excellence was not only achieved in the academic field but also in sports and cultural activities. I developed a strong yearning to be a part of this do or die spirit. After two years of mentoring students with academics, I believed that it was my turn to be a part of this magical program.
I talked to some close friends who were already students at IIM Trichy. The way that their time in this college had brought about a positive change in the way they talked and behaved reconfirmed my faith in this institution. Now that the goal was set I began my preparation for CAT with the same do or die spirit. I was able to score 99.86 percentile in CAT 2017 and went through the selection process. I was very confident of my chances and wasn’t wrong. I converted the calls from numerous prestigious institutions and choose IIM Trichy. To satisfy my curiosity I visited the newly built state of the art campus a couple days before my joining. The posh hostel rooms, the technologically sound classrooms, the gigantic library and the incredible sports facility would put most other B-school campuses to shame.
After a inspiring week of meeting prominent business leaders and a through sessions by faculty during our orientation session, we started interacting with the previous batch of students. They went way out of their way to make time out of their busy schedule to prepare us and set us apart from the other business school graduates. I found the faculty to be humble, exceptionally qualified and experts in their subject. I acknowledge how a little bit of luck and a lot of handwork has helped me reach my holy grail for management education. I am looking forward to absorbing as much as I can during my short stay in this institution and putting it all to use at the organisation I work with or probably an organisation of my own someday.
Which ABG company would you want to work for and why?
I might be interested to work with Ultra Tech Cements which is an ABG company. The reason is that I come from a family of engineers who have mostly worked with cement plants in Tamil Nadu for 2 generations. I have also interned with Ultratech cements during my graduation and developed a strong liking for the work environment there. I believe that I can contribute much towards the growth and positioning on the company in our fast developing country.