One after the other startups are raising eyebrows through their IPOs in the current scenario. It is no longer necessary that a b-school student's dream company would be a legacy one. One such b-school graduate was Rangarajan, who did his MBA from SDA Bocconi and decided to start his career with a startup called AskMeBazar. There was no looking back ever since for Rangarajan who currently works as the AVP at Unacademy. InsideIIM got in touch with him to understand his journey and how he became an architect of his own career growth. Here are the excerpts:
1. Rangarajan, you decided to pursue your MBA in 2013 after considerable experience at Infosys. Why did you feel the need for it and why did you choose SDA Bocconi?
Whenever we face a problem in our lives, we reconsider and rethink some of the decisions we have made. The same happened to me when I started working for Infosys, particularly on the E-Commerce project. I realised I still have some aspirations that I am yet to achieve. It dawned upon me that I did not want to be at Infosys for the next five years. Certain that my strength lay in management and business administration, I decided to pursue an MBA.
When I decided to do my Masters, I was looking for schools abroad. But during my research, I stumbled across the program offered by SDA Bocconi Asia Center which is an International Masters in Business. In addition, the college offers a four-month specialisation semester at the main Bocconi Campus in Milan.
When I came across this college, I knew I had to apply here and secure a seat in their program. They offer scholarships and tuition waivers to selected few students based on their merits and extracurricular activities and I looked forward to it. All the faculty and team members I had a chance to interact with during my admission were very amiable and helpful. I secured a waiver in my tuition fees. The college thus gave me the option to have a robust financial base before starting my master’s. In addition, seeing how considerate the faculty was throughout my admission process increased my willingness to be a part of the SDA Bocconi family.
2. Did you get clarity about the placement you wanted after your business school?
I was very clear from the beginning that I wanted to join a startup because by virtue of their small teams and fast paced growth, startups offer intense learning. SDA Bocconi's rigorous curriculum and encouraging environment helped me prepare well for my journey ahead. Career Development Services (CDS) at Bocconi helped me develop my skills and prepare me well for my interviews. Through the CDS, I could get various projects and internship opportunities. They also enabled my journey with AskMeBazaar.
3. How was the learning at AskMeBazar for you? What were some of the roles you took up there and how did that lay the foundation for your long corporate journey?
Immediately after completing my studies at Bocconi, I started working for AskMeBazar which is India’s largest managed marketplace that recreates the great Indian shopping experience online. It was an early-stage startup that allowed me to work across different domains and departments. One of the perks of joining a startup is getting first-hand experience at all the company’s work.
Therefore, I joined as a category manager where my responsibility was to start a category of products from scratch and scale it up to an appropriate level for business. This role gave me an idea about how pricing works and how we go about promoting a company’s product.
I was then pulled up onto a new role of group category manager where I overlooked 2-3 categories of products for the business. And then, I was in the position of working with the media committee of the company. This gave me a taste of the marketing world. Being a category manager worked as a catalyst to this role because marketing is concerned with promoting the brand as a whole.
4. In 2016, you moved from AskMeBazaar to OYO which was starting to gain huge market share then. What was your contribution in the growth story of OYO and what was your experience working there like?
I had the privilege of entirely building the Tamil Nadu business for OYO. We went from zero to one - starting from scratch to reaching 150+ hotels. That entire journey contributed towards creating top 3 cities from Tamil Nadu in OYO's operated business share.
My most rewarding experience with OYO was during the pandemic. Business continuity was the biggest challenge for us as travel was completely frozen. The top management had a clear path ahead which was reducing costs to maintain operability. Even though the business couldn't shape up due to covid driven restructuring, I had the opportunity to build the core team and scale from first kitchen to 600+ across 20+ cities in 6 months.
5. You have now joined Unacademy as an Associate Vice President and are working towards expanding the same. Technology and the current scenario have boosted e-learning to a massive extent. What has your experience been like so far and how do you think it will pan out in the future?
Tech is a broad space in India, and as you know, every parent aspires for their sons and daughters to be better than them in their field of interest. So if tech can solve that, then why not give it your best shot?
Also, when it comes to tech, accessibility to education is one of the essential things. For instance, during the Covid-19 pandemic, almost everyone from tier 4 and tier 5 towns had access to online platforms for communication, either through zoom calls or hangouts, etc. The usage of the internet and technology increased by almost 40% during that time. So that bridged the accessibility issues as well as helped skate the approach to online education. Technology gave people a chance to study even when they did not have the leverage to attend classes physically.
Of course, there are pros and cons to this, where cons essentially entail meeting people physically and interacting with them face to face. We all miss meeting our colleagues and family members physically and having a conversation that did not occur on an electronic device. Seeing the recent shift to tech use, companies are also changing their working environment. A recent change of company culture is the option of hybrid work culture for their employees. Tech will thus play a pivotal role in our lives, and we need to be prepared for a change in the revolution.
6. Looking back at your journey, would you consider it the right decision to go for your MBA from SDA Bocconi? What doors did it open for you when you look back at it in hindsight?
When we make confident choices in our lives, there is always an option of things not working out. But when I look back at the alternatives I made in my life, I would say they all worked out in the end. For example, my decision to stop working at Infosys and join SDA Bocconi Asia Center was critical and crucial. All the quality decisions that I made came mainly from my learnings at the college and my experiences.
Joining every college comes with its own risk and return, and if the return is so good, any student would be willing to be a part of the journey and benefit from it. Therefore, I can proudly say that I am a part of the Bocconian Family and that I am at a stage in my life where I am content with my decisions and very excited about what the future holds for me.
To know more about SDA Bocconi Asia Center and its exciting B-school life, click here!