On Memorable Experiences At IIM Sirmaur

There are quite many memories that come to mind, when I sit down to pen down my most memorable class experience. We have had professors come from various top B-Schools and let their love for their subjects entrance us, generalists or specialist we plan to become, already in wow of the subject or not.

We have had a professor who proved (with 95% confidence level) that objective questions in the quizzes were not advisable, as more than 50% of the class may have guessed the answers. Another conducted a quiz in the class with almost no limits (he ended the quiz lamenting the fact that no student actually lead the class through the quiz by solving the questions on the board!).

We had a faculty who broke down the extremely abstract subject like Strategic Management with anecdotes from how he ran the incubation centre of IIML (He even broke down how he strategized for his speech in a function: differentiating himself, making sure he left a mark and most importantly, made sure all stakeholders are addressed).

While these were extremely interesting faculty driving knowledge, the B-school experience and memories are complete only because of the amazing characters we get to interact within the class and in hostels. You will surely find some like-minded people who you bounce your ideas off, get guidance when you are down and of course, more often than usual, for some light hearted banter.

An extremely grounded individual, Abhijeet Lovalekar stands out of the rest with his positive outlook to life and a personal self-image of himself that helps him rise above adversities and situations, which I believe most of us should look to emulate (You can count on him for a daily and healthy dose of motivation!) Coming with a rich experience in Operations, he has an uncanny ability to breakdown complex things into simple actionable items, helping me personally to move beyond abstract ideas to suitable operational decisions/items.

A self-professed lyadhaholic (the closest but yet quite lacking a word in English to describe the Bengali word Lyadh would be - extremely lethargic) Atreyee Roy is extremely productive and resourceful, with her professional dedication for work helping her take and run initiatives single handedly. This bespectacled girl with an extremely cute panda-like appearance makes you go from ‘Aww’ to awe within a couple of interactions (Though panda like, she is balance personified, ironically)

Anirudhha Yadav is the quintessential Youth of India: Ambitious, extremely driven to achieve milestones (using proper processes to ‘jugaad’) and Decisive. With his expertise in Operations and marketing abilities, he is a guy who will get things done with such ease and style, and have broken no sweat (This can be extremely infuriating for people like me, who end up looking bruised and battered after work!)

There are so many more: There is Prateek V and Shankho C (who can give you information about anything under the sun), Kaushik Bagchi (Bagchi/Prof. Bagchi as we know him, who has his way around numbers), Amber Sahu (who with sheer effort and dedication became an extremely effective communicator within a year in PGP), Raktim Sonowal (with his inimitable style and attitude will teach you to not worry in life!), Phukato Sema and Vaishnavi Deshpande (a simple life lesson: There is no end to learning and you should invest in yourself to harness your talent) and so many more.

It is a humbling experience to interact with such gifted people on my campus. If not anything else, I would love to be just selfish and just imbibe a little bit of all of them in all my interactions with them.

The ABG company that I would like to work with:

With an experience in the Information Technology sector for about 3 years and specialisation in Marketing, I believe I would be a rather good fit for Aditya Birla Retail Limited, the retail arm of Aditya Birla Group. The daily challenges of the company owing to the close proximity to the end user coupled with the scope of growth that the industry offers makes it a lucrative choice for me, and I would like to put in my efforts and dedication into contributing for the betterment of the company and indirectly, for the society at large.

-Srikanth Kurumathur