In our list of India's Best 50 - the 50 Most Employable Students from the Class of 2021-23, we feature MBA students who have walked that extra mile and done that little more to stand out! One of those featured in today's story, Neeraj Goidani, has shown an incredible amount of passion to achieve his true potential. Read on and find out his story!
The following are Neeraj Goidani’s set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top 50 Most Employable MBA Graduates of the Class of 2023. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated, Neeraj's story and profile stood out. Here's his story in his own words.
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.
During my tenure at Deloitte Consulting, I volunteered to be a part of a 2-man 'production and go live' team for my project. Previously, I had never worked on a live project and I was aware that there is a lot to learn during this phase of any project. I was required to work on code changes and customizations as and when they came even at odd hours. There was an incident where I had to make changes in a live database being used by the client and their own 15 partners. It could have an impact on 15 live websites and even a small error could break multiple workflows. I decided to take this on. I would be lying if I said that I was not hesitant to ask my manager to do it herself as it was highly critical. Initially, I recreated the entire database on a local server to ensure I am not making any mistakes. Post that, I made the changes in the live database. This took me more time than what was expected but it filled me with the courage to take up more issues like this. This also came up as a major point of recognition during my appraisal.
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act?
I have been fortunate enough to have been brought up in a family where I did not have to struggle for food, clothes, or a roof over my head. To understand the plight of those who have to, I decided to set up an idli chutney stall outside a garden for a day. I did this with 3 more friends. We went deep into the city to find where can we get dough at economical rates, bought veggies for making the chutney, and found a place where we could make our idlis and chutney. After working till early morning, we caught up on whatever sleep we could and started our stall at 7 am. Whatever we did earn, we went and donated it all to an orphanage.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
Once, I was assigned a task that would take about 10 hours to complete based on my analysis with my team lead. Later, an alternative idea struck me which would reduce it to a 2-hour task. My lead still wanted me to do what he had mentioned. I didnt really follow his approach and he had not explained to me why that was better.I gave it a fair thought and tried to understand the pros and cons of the situation. I could not really find a con to my approach. It was quicker to do and the code performance would also be better. Since he had specifically asked me to not do it, I could not go ahead with my approach. I realized that there must have been a reason why my lead would have asked me not to do it. Hence, I decided to ask him about his chain of thoughts as to why was asking me to stick to his approach. He gave me reasons which made sense in the bigger picture as that piece of code would be re-used multiple times in the future and those tasks would be at most 1-hour tasks for others.
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 that has led you to do deep work in that field?
I have my own side venture, 'Read Return Repeat'. I provided door-to-door logistics for renting books of all kinds spanning children's stories, fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, etc. I also provided book owners an opportunity to generate passive income. I made all things around books not boring anymore. I created a database of over 700 books. I was able to rent out 15+ books every month. I have a Facebook page as well for this. I handled the operations of pick-up and drop completely. The next step for me to make it bigger was to create tie-ups with libraries and study centers but then the lockdown happened. I was able to run this for 5 months successfully.
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 break it down 3 parts. I would use 3.3 million dollars to donate to a cause like an NGO as I truly believe in giving back to society. I would do my background check on various NGOs and find credible ones before going ahead with the donation. I would also want to like to know how my funds would be used to ensure that it is not being used in any malpractices. One such NGO that I know of today is called 'Keep Moving Movement'. It is aimed at building a culture of inspiration among students in classes 9 and 10. I truly believe it has the potential to change the lives of millions of kids. I would then donate 3.4 million dollars to set up a sports facility as I am a sports enthusiast. India is gradually moving and developing career options in sports other than cricket like football and kabbadi. I would look out for merit-based performers, give appropriate scholarships, and would like to contribute to India in this way towards sports. I would then use the last 3.3 million dollars as a means of attaining financial freedom. I would diversify this money and invest them in assets like gold, stocks, bonds, etc. I would find a way to generate passive income via these assets and secure a safe future for my family.
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As per government tax payers' data and our assessment, only about 6,00,000 Indian taxpayers earn an annual 'salaried' income of INR 30 lacs or above. And only 11,00,000 Indian taxpayers earn a 'total' income of INR 30 lacs or more.
Have you ever considered how much time it would take for you to be amongst these top 0.5% earners in India?
Find out here!