I Risked My Promotion To Do An MBA | Harshvardhan Gautam, InsideIIM's Best 50

The following is Harshvardhan Gautam'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, Harshvardhan Gautam's story and profile stood out. Here's his story in his words. "I am Harshvardhan Gautam. A focused, goal-oriented and experienced Marketing and Sales professional. Currently pursuing MBA 2018-20 from KJ SIMSR. Love interacting with people, understanding what makes them tick and how to get the very best out of them. Believe in the ideology of having a balanced combination of creative thinking with an analytical and detail-oriented approach. An articulate communicator with exceptional presentation skills; enriched with the ability to learn new techniques & concepts in a short span of time and deliver in all. I am a budding entrepreneur, an avid reader, traveller, loves to go on trips with friends, passionate cricketer and animal lover." 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. "The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg. The biggest risk I had taken so far in my life is to pursue MBA at that moment of time when my family's financial condition was not that good and I was about to get promoted and had good job offers as well. At that time the situation was really critical as I need to help my family as well as pay my MBA fees. Although the fees were arranged with the help of a loan. But I need to do something as my opportunity cost was really huge. I made sure that I need to take my MBA very seriously to get out of it as a success to provide my family with all that they deserve. Since my MBA was really very important for me, I took part in lots of National levels B-school competitions and won some of them and also simultaneously worked on several live projects and internships to learn new skills. Although those times were tough but now since I got my job in my interested sector and domain, I realized that leaving my job and pursuing an MBA was the best decision of my life." When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act. "The truly selfless act I did was to be a part of an initiative which is being organized by our MBA institute to provide quality education in English to students from 5th to 8th standard of a Vernacular Medium school. This initiative is called as Ankur ELI PROGRAM OBJECTIVE The Main Objective of Ankur ELI is to help the Students of a Vernacular Medium School from Class V to Class VIII to get equipped with English in three major aspects - Writing, Speaking & Listening. RESPONSIBILITIES I was selected as a part of the initiative & was assigned to mentor a boy in Class V.

• My Responsibility is to teach my mentee English along with providing a Holistic Personality Development.
•  I have to take care of other students of Class V as well in the absence of their respective mentors
• Apart from these, I have actively taken part in the Creation of Content which would eventually be used to teach the school children.

VALUE ADDITION In a span of nine months, I made my mentee to improve his level of English Literacy in all three aspects - Writing, Speaking & Listening. Especially, I helped him to gain the confidence to speak English in front of new people." Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it? "This instance is from my work experience days before MBA My team was given a new goal to sell our product to a new customer segment that we hadn’t served in the past. The group had strong opinions about the approach we should take. In spite of their voices, I had concerns about their strategy; I thought it may fail as it didn't align with the client’s core needs. But I was in the minority and when I spoke up I wasn't heard. I needed to find another way to make the case to my teammates. I set up a focus group with a potential client so my team could understand the challenges and priorities of the people we aimed to serve. The great news was they saw that our planned product wouldn't meet these needs, but if we made some slight adjustments to the service, we could deliver something of real value. The team rallied behind this and got on board. We were ultimately successful in bringing this client onboard and six more!" 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 nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.” - Mandy Hale Social Entrepreneurship I have always been inclined towards social initiatives, which have been anything from teaching the lesser privileged to cleanliness drives. The journey began with the role of a volunteer at a not-for-profit organization. Then after working there for almost a year, during my MBA I found one professor who fueled my engine in the right direction towards entrepreneurship and teach me some defined guidelines to follow. During that tenure, I had also become the part of Ankur ELI where we worked towards equipping those students to speak, write and understand English. I found my true passion there and there on I started working towards the same by creating an organization which works towards the benefits of underprivileged children to grow and make their dream come true." 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? "I would like to answer this question in 2 scenarios: Present scenario: If I get $10 million to use it any way I deem fit then at the present moment of time as a responsible Indian citizen I will donate the entire amount to PM CARES Fund to fight Covid-19. At present, our nation, as well as the entire world, is facing a downside in the global economy. Job cuts are taking place, hiring is freezed by MNCs and several daily wage labourers are not getting their 2-time meal to survive, the situation is really worse. Also, India needs to be prepared in advance to handle Covid-19 further cases in the country if it not stopped. The PM CARES fund is used for combat, containment and relief efforts against the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Thus it is our moral responsibility to help our nation win against the Covid-19 by contributing in any way possible. Neutral scenario: When everything will be smooth in this entire world. Well, I'd definitely pay the returns of my student loans, and all the other loans of my family, because the dagger that hangs need to be chopped off. That would approximately take 1 crore out of the corpus. Then out of the remaining one, I would like to divide that into 2 parts. Firstly I will use the 25 crores out of the left 74 crores, to live my dream by buying an amazing house for my family, taking them to the world tour. The remaining 49 crores, 30 crores will be used for building a medical institution where patients will be treated for free as well as medical students are also taught for free and rest 19 crores I will invest so that my corpus doesn’t end and I use it towards the development of the medical institution."

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