Nearly a decade after MBA, I can still connect very much to the learning and experiences at SIBM-B in several aspects of my profession. I was one of the few students who opted out of placements in college. I became an entrepreneur instead. I co-founded a Creatives agency and bootstrapped it from scratch to a healthy level in a span of 5 years.
As an entrepreneur, I had to juggle among the roles of a CEO, marketer, salesman, recruiter, finance manager, accountant and even a customer-service executive. It was a very challenging task and the overall exposure gained in the MBA program helped me to have a grip on the proceedings. I was able to create marketing strategies for my own firm and my clients, read and interpret financial statements strategically, and create a process for improving the efficiency of our operations. Our company received mentoring from the CIIE of IIM-A and was even recognized as one of India’s top ten promising start-ups by the IIT-Guwahati. The entrepreneurial stint gave me a real platform to test all the frameworks and models learnt in the classrooms. Contrary to what many of us would think while discussing them in the classrooms, they did make sense most of the times!
After hitting a plateau, we had to close the start-up for business reasons, making a good case study for a firm not crossing the chasm between early success and sustained growth. I joined an NGO later for a brief period. I am a linguist now in a popular marketing communications agency. My career path is definitely not a typical MBA student’s corporate growth path. Still, the MBA has sharpened my business acumen well enough to give me the confidence to chart my own path.