What makes IIM Trichy unique?
Business schools selects applicants who are curious, outgoing and, perhaps above all else, driven. This cohort is continuously in search of the next personal milestone - a geeky sort of career-minded person, I guess. To recognise this, b-school admits someone already on the move and educate them on topics relevant to their goals. The selection process yields a campus full of an amazingly varied set of backgrounds, knowledge, hobbies, etc., brought together by a shared interest in business. Two years of your life spent on the campus would provide an experience unlikely to be found elsewhere. Personally, it was hard to escape feeling lucky, if only to be in the environment and absorb the surroundings.
That said, a winnowing commences around the time you start classes. Faced with an absurd number of clubs and tempting extracurricular activities, a calendar reckoning is required. “Self-interest, curiosity to learn something new” becomes not only a technique to survive in short-term but also necessary to imbibe it as a habit if you have any hope of finding long-term satisfaction. In that sense, IIM T experience can feel a bit transactional.
While on one hand, you have to conserve space for reflection and for some life-changing decisions, on the other you are here to test your ideas and explore unmapped areas of potential interests. As for academic rigour, for many, it depended on prior experience, the desired level of engagement and course selection. The course material was not especially difficult through my first-year course in corporate finance stumped me on multiple occasions.
The second-year elective course on entrepreneurship thought me more than all the courses put together from earlier years. That gave me an opportunity, not only to test the theorems I have learnt, but gave me real flavour of the business world. And I found answers to some questions I had, why someone took certain decisions given his/her situations from the case discussions I had earlier. All the while the clock ticks away as time passes. When two years were up all of us were ready to leave, in search of what comes next.
“
The privilege of IIM T is that you can be anything you want; the challenge is remaining true to who you are and what you want to become.” IIM-T often reminds you that it's really up to you, a sometimes-unsettling feeling.
Which ABG company would you want to work for and why?
Why Retail?
I like the people aspect of the business. Shopping makes people happy when they find what they like and I’d like to be a part of that. I like to interact with different people, there is no other place where you will get such an opportunity to interact with various personalities and understand their needs in better way. Retail marketing involves personal interaction that most other forms of marketing just do not entail. Personal interaction is meaningful on many levels to the client and can result in a lasting relationship between the brand and the consumer. It also boosts confidence in your outside life. Next is fast paced environment, you have to make effective decisions in a short period of time, which often makes me think “out of the box”. “Customer is the king”- Retail teaches how to handle stressful scenarios which will benefit me both professionally and personally.
-This article is written by Selvakumar M - Class of 2019