About me:
As I sit down to write about myself (which frankly, is a bit embarrassing), I can’t help but remember something that one of my teachers in school had once said to us – “Your life will not be defined by your success stories and achievements, but rather by moments and events which teach you hard lessons in life.” Back then as a kid, I could not have possibly imagined the depth that those words had. But in a way, my life over the next decade or so turned out to be quite a roller coaster ride with spectacular highs and crushing lows. Looking back, I can say that I have had a myriad of good, not so good and some really bad experiences, each of which has shaped my personality. I can proudly claim that I have rarely been afraid of going wrong or trying something new and in the process, I have excelled in a lot of things, failed in many more and have acquired skills which make me a truly versatile individual.
So, let’s start with a very brief introduction about my background. I did my schooling from D.A.V. Public School, Chandrasekharpur, Bhubaneshwar. Then I completed my graduation from BITS Pilani Goa campus in dual streams of Msc. Hons. Mathematics and B.E.Hons. Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering. I worked with JSW in a project involving the development of software PID controllers for their plant purposes and usage of soft sensors in several manufacturing operations. Then I worked with Avaya India on a project involving real-time data snap-in streaming on a platform called Collaboration Environment. I joined IIM Shillong in 2015 and currently am in the final year of my PGDM. My major areas of interest are related to the domains of sales & marketing and strategy. I completed my summer internship with National Innovation Foundation, India where I worked extensively on the data related to the business development queries received by NIF across the period 2010-16 and also on the pricing of products present in NIF’S business development catalogue.
Some of the most notable moments of my life have come in the form of the following events:
• Being selected as a delegate to the Harvard US-India Initiative Conference held in January 2017 to discuss pressing socio-economic issues related to India
• Working as an Office bearer of the Student Council at IIM Shillong, the apex body of the institute for interfacing with various stakeholders and taking forward several initiatives of the institute
• Working as an Event coordinator of the annual corporate flagship event of IIM Shillong- Golf Cup Season 8 and season 9
• Being associated with the conceptualization, initiation and carrying forward of the ‘Nurturing Minds’ initiative in IIM Shillong in memory of late Dr Abdul Kalam
• Working as a part of the core team of Music Society, BITS Goa that conducted inductions as well as organised musical events for the college cultural festival WAVES in 2009 and 2010
• Working as a part of the core committee team of QUARK, the annual technical festival of BITS Goa in 2009 and 2010
• Receiving the BOLT award from AIR INDIA in recognition of a project work towards responsible citizenship on environmental issues
• Being awarded in the 10th National Science Congress for a project on prawn culture, storage, preservation & nutrition
• Receiving the Vishaarad certification in Hindustani vocal classical music from AVGM, Mumbai
• Receiving the certificate of honour from IFSE, Rohtak for outstanding achievements in junior and senior national level mathematics Olympiads
• Being awarded the Uranium Scholarship by the Uranium Society for the advancement of education and research in chemical and allied sciences among youth
I am someone who likes to face ambiguous situations. Most real world problems are multidimensional in nature and it is very important to simultaneously see the problem as a whole and also break it down into mini tasks. These abilities have helped me to be an effective student coordinator for several campus initiatives like Golf Cup (which is the annual flagship corporate event of IIM Shillong), Nurturing Minds (an initiative for education of underprivileged children in Shillong), initiation of IIM Shillong’s first study abroad programme with NTU last year, initiation of the fine arts club in campus and many others.
Give us an instance when you failed miserably and how did you overcome that downfall?
In the pre-final year of my under graduation at BITS Goa, I could not clear one of my core courses because of which I got a year backlog. It was a tough phase to go through because I had always been a good student and although my academic performance had been on a dip, this was unexpected from me. People were quick to make judgements and brand me as a failure. On my part, I had never been a person who would give excuses. I did not want to give excuses this time either. I knew I had faulted, had not done my job properly; but the barrage of questions was becoming rather painful by the day. All my friends went away for their internships and suddenly I was stuck up with a junior batch with whom I had to complete this course with. As per the institute rules, I only had to repeat this one subject. But I thought to myself that I can probably utilise the year to do some serious soul searching and get back to the basics of doing the hard yards by concentrating on academics and inculcating some discipline back into my life. This was essential because I was sure that I wanted to go for higher studies and thus wanted to get rid of all the laxness that had crept into me.
I had bad grades in about 10 subjects. I chose to repeat all of them, converted almost all of them into straight A's and even topped a few of them. In my subsequent internship year, I again scored straight 10's on the GPA scale. Within a year, I improved my CGPA by 1.5 points. More than the marks and the grades, the hard work of that one year rebuilt my foundations and gave me confidence that I could do well in CAT. Looking back I would say, that one year taught me humility and empathy, qualities that I consider are essential for leadership. It taught me that nobody should be written off, that everybody deserves a second chance and that it is always important to remain positive and have self-belief when one is going through bad times.
What is the biggest risk that you have taken so far and why?
This was during my internship year (final year) at BITS. As per the system, we had to go through two internships of six months each. I was a dual degree student at BITS with one of my specialisations being Electronics and Instrumentation engineering. I chose to do my first internship with JSW Steel Limited in the same domain. By this time, I was also sure that I wanted to go for an MBA after the completion of my under graduation and wanted to get a holistic view of how various businesses work. At JSW, through my projects, I was exposed to several aspects of manufacturing processes, supply chain, operations, logistics and even marketing. For my second internship, I wanted to have an understanding of how IT and cloud systems work. So I chose to do my second internship with an IT firm which was AVAYA in Pune. This was a big risk because I had never been much exposed to coding, testing, development of APIs and development of proof of concepts. But my goal was clear. I did not want to enter an MBA program without getting an overview of the IT industry.
Although the first month was very tough in terms of learning JAVA and other applications, my mentors helped me out really well. And again, after 6 to 8 weeks of dedicated efforts, I could start working on the project that had been allotted to me. The stint at AVAYA also helped me a lot to infer what managers are expected to do in IT firms.
If you had a magic wand, what is the one problem in India that you would magically wish away? Explain why.
A big problem in India that really bothers me is that of intolerance of our society towards failure. They do teach us in schools that failures are the pillars of successes. But when it comes to real life scenarios, the Indian society has been very unforgiving towards failures. It's important to understand that somebody who has failed today might actually turn it around tomorrow. While the mentally strong ones deal with failure in a very dignified way, there are others who actually need emotional support from family, friends and relatives when they are going through tough times. But instead, people do not miss any chances of pulling a person down when they actually are in dire need of motivation. The culture of gossip that is so prevalent in our society also does not help matters. It is important to give time and space to people to deal with failure and come out of it at their own pace.
An associated thing that also happens due to this is the unnecessary pressure of expectations that most individuals have to deal with right from childhood. The system as such hardly encourages any form of creativity and lateral thinking. Instead, we end up manufacturing individuals who are low on emotional quotient and empathy. Money is all that matters to most of us at the end of the day. We choose jobs that we are not suited for, we keep running after more and more money instead of focussing on what we would truly enjoy doing and this vicious cycle keeps on continuing. This is one problem which I wish would go away from India.