Sometimes we need to make tough decisions to propel our careers forward. The decision comes with risks. Today, we bring you a story of someone who hails from the city of lakes - Udaipur. He pursued his engineering from IIT and dived into case competitions during college. The outcome? His passion and rigorous learnings landed him among India's Best-30 Most Employable MBA Graduates!
The following is Rohan Paliwal's set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top-50 most employable MBA graduates of the Class of 2021. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated by the Founder of InsideIIM-Kampus Konversations, Rohan Paliwal’s story and profile stood out. Here's his story in his words.
“I graduated from IIT BHU last year and am currently pursuing business management at XLRI with a Marketing and Finance specialization. Recently, I completed my internship at Mahindra Group as a part of their GMC program. I am also a Marketing enthusiast and have worked on several live projects in FMCG, e-commerce, travel, and hospitality. I absolutely love solving cases and have participated in more than 20 competitions in the last 1 year. Those have been a great source of learning for me in ways more than one, and I have also been able to ace some of them. I like to spend my spare time catching up with friends & family, taking evening strolls, and listening to music."
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 I took was directly going for an MBA as a fresher after I graduated from IIT BHU. I had already bagged a decent offer (PPO) from Citibank in my undergraduate placements, and even though I was sure that I want to do an MBA, I was not sure if it was the right time.
I consulted multiple seniors who were pursuing an MBA, out of which some suggested going for it while others suggested otherwise. I was in a serious dilemma during that time. Leaving the comfort of a good offer at a stable firm was contrary to what my understanding would prefer.
Finally, I took the call and decided that I will go for the MBA. I rejected my offer, filled in my admission form for XLRI, and got ready for the challenges ahead. The journey has been amazing ever since."
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
"Very recently, we completed our summer internship process here at XLRI. This time, the whole process was virtual and extremely different compared to last year, especially in terms of the kind of support that juniors get from the senior batch during the whole process. Extending emotional support to anyone under distress becomes very difficult in such a setting.
I got aware of the situation of a couple of juniors who I did not know personally and who were going through a tough time handling the process. As I had already experienced it last year, I could imagine how difficult it was. So, I decided to help them in whatever way possible until they got placed.
I used to voluntarily check on them twice every day and see if they were doing fine. I used to help them in their on-the-go preparation whenever they got shortlisted for any process, and I encouraged them to talk to me and let it out whenever they felt stressed.
In a couple of days, we all were able to get through it together, and in the process itself, I developed a strong bonding with some of those super-talented people."
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
"One month back, I was on a conference call with my committee team (CII Yi, XLRI) figuring how we would go about conducting our events lineup this year. The schedule was already running late by at least 2 months, and it was high time that we conducted our first event. Further, the events were also to be modified, keeping in mind the virtual scenario.
We had around a week before our exams were to begin, followed by the summer internship process for juniors, and I believed we needed to conduct our first event in that week itself. I pitched the event, but most people did not agree to it, citing paucity of time.
I went back and made a foolproof schedule for the event's execution (an online quiz followed by a case study) and presented it to the team the next day. Looking at my efforts and enthusiasm, most of the people got on board.
By putting in some extra hours, we were actually able to pull it off in a week – from planning to execution to the declaration of results. Looking back, I feel if I hadn’t disagreed at that point, we might not have been able to pull it off the way we did."
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?
"I have been solving cases since I was at IIT BHU. I loved participating in hackathons and that love got carried over to my MBA class as well.
In the last 1 year, I have participated in more than 20 competitions. Be it a marketing, operations, finance, or strategy case, every time I participated in one, I learned something new. Along with it, my ability to understand the problem, to structure it, and to present the solution also improved.
My expertise also got a boost when I got a consulting internship where I had the job of continuously developing solutions for my client. That experience contributed a lot to deepening my knowledge and understanding.
This has helped me perform well in many competitions. To date, I have qualified into the finals of 5 national level competitions and won 2 of them. Apart from all other perks that come along, I have also secured a PPI from Amazon on winning one of those."
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 invest 1 crore each in 75 Indian startups from different sectors, which look promising in the long term. For example, biotechnology, nanotechnology, Sustainability, Aerospace, Bigdata, or AI. I have two strong reasons for this.
Firstly, I want the money to be used productively for the development of our economy and what better way to do this than investing in innovative centers of our country.
Secondly, looking from a return point of view, my rationale behind this approach is that looking from a probabilistic point of view, there is a high possibility that at least one of these startups is going to cross the roof in the coming decade or so. When that happens, even if the other 74 startups don't make it to the top, the 1 crore invested in the successful one will get me a 1000 times return.”