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, Ekalavya Chaudhuri, has shown an incredible amount of passion to achieve his true potential. Read on and find out how his story!
The following are Ekalavya Chaudhuri’s set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top 50 Most Employable MBA Graduates of the Class of 2023. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated, Ekalavya'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.
Having secured a 99.94 percentile in the National Eligibility Test and a Junior Research Fellowship from the Government of India, I was comfortably on track for a PhD in my subject, English Literature, but the life of academia in Literature felt like it would be unfulfilling for me. I wanted to be a part of and influence change in the world at scale, at large, enable institution changes and work to be a part of moving towards them, and though academia had been my initial preference, I figured out it just wouldn't be the right cultural fit for me. I determined that what I really wanted was to be a part of management. The CAT was not a comfortable zone for me, as I had been out of touch with math for several years. Besides, letting go of the prospect of a PhD (and a comfortable research fellowship with a 31000 INR per month stipend) was a big risk for me as I didn't come from a very affluent family. Nevertheless, I burnt the midnight oil and persevered at QA and DILR mock sets all through multiple nights, with my heart set on the CAT. Ultimately, I managed to crack the CAT, get IIM calls, and get into IIM Ahmedabad.
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act?
When I was the Cultural Coordinator of my school, back in my Class 12, an invitation came in. A team I had been a part of as dramatics captain back in Class 11 had won the regionals of a dramatics competition, and a team from our school was being invited now at this stag to go on to represent my institution (i.e. my school) in Mumbai for the finals. As CultCoord, I had the authority to, and as our team had been the one to win qualification perhaps ethically deservingly too, enlist my own (seniors) team for this opportunity. I also had a personal thought/interest: I had won a best actor award and had the chance at trying for this award at the nationals level. However, I felt the juniors of the batch deserved the exposure and merited it after having worked really hard and tirelessly at our school cultural fest that year, and so for them and their sake, I elected to send their team.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
When I disagreed with the opinion of my English Literature professor on Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author" in my MA days, I wrote my entire MA dissertation thesis project logically laying out my point of view. In the critical analysis of my thesis, I mingled my critique of the essay with an indirect critique of the opinion/idea my professor had put forward on the interpretation of it.(I got an A, so hopefully, I'd been able to impress my professor with the argument I had made.)
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?
Performance.I've acted in multiple dramatics presentations- at school, at college, once professionally. I've acted in a Bengali feature film, Tarikh. I've won a number of awards for performance poetry and briefly co-founded an initiative called Performance Poetry Kolkata to promote a spoken word poetry performing arts culture among the youth of Kolkata. I was also Cultural Coordinator of my school in charge of recruiting students for cultural performance activities. Currently at IIM Ahmedabad, I am Content Writing and Editing Cell Head, as one of the Cell Heads of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad Cultural and Theatrical Society (IIMACTS).
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?
Donate part of it to a few charities of my choice, and invest the rest in starting up an independent media platform for bringing up-to-date news and content for aiding business professionals, business students etc., with latest news about developments in marketing, strategy, public policy, around the world.
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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.
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