People say "higher the risk, higher the return". But, how many of us are willing to take that risk when you have something comfortable also as an option? In today's feature, we present you Pranav Vaish. Losing his father to a chronic ailment, he was given the opportunity to take up his father's government job as a replacement. However, Pranav chose otherwise. He decided to do an MBA. Pranav's self-confidence and perseverance placed him amongst InsideIIM’s Best 50 Most Employable Graduates of the Class of 2020.
The following is Pranav Vaish's set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top-50 most employable MBA graduates of the Class of 2020. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated by the Founder of InsideIIM-Kampus Konversations, Pranav’s story and profile stood out. Here's a little about him, in his own words.
"My name is Pranav Vaish. I am one of the top 10%iler at IIM Indore (Batch of 2020) and Ex-Secretary of the International Student Exchange Committee. Hailing from a small town named Saharanpur in UP, the journey I’ve had till now has been of ups and downs, but the experience that I got with every step has made be brighter, more passionate and a highly responsible human being. Be it learning new things or thinking out of the box to solve a problem, I am confident in my abilities to create a lasting impression with my work in whatever I take up."
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.
"The biggest risk I took was going against the suggestion of a majority of my relatives, which was to quit engineering midway and take up a job. Halfway through my engineering, I lost my dad to a chronic ailment he had for a long time. It was the biggest challenge life threw at me, as my mother and I would be relying on each other for everything. Some of my relatives’ were of the view that I should take up a job on offer (as my father’s replacement) with the UP State Government, as a clerk. They were of the view that I will be able to lead a happy and satisfying life, and job opportunities with the government were rare.
I was not ready for the same, because I knew I had the potential of achieving a lot more, and this would not be something my father would have wanted. Hence, at the age of 21, I convinced my mother to take the job (who would have had 8 years to retire) and promised myself to be earning enough for a comfortable life for by when she retires.
Today, there are still 4 years to her retirement. I have cleared CAT, completed my MBA, and secured a job which will pay 3 times more than what I would have got if I gave in to the pressure and opinion of my relatives. The risk I took at that time couldn’t have had a better result than this, hence, I am happy I had the courage to stand up for myself."
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
"Some days you meet people helping who feels like one of the biggest bliss in your life, even if you have to do it going over and above your daily tasks and taking time out of your leisure hours! One such incident occurred during my Summer Internship with Dabur. I had to survey various FMCG Retailers to gauge insights on Distributor & Company Cooperation for us vis-à-vis prominent competitors. I designed a thorough questionnaire that would take 15 minutes per outlet & allocated myself 4 days to complete the survey for 100 retailers with approximately 6 hours of market visit per day. During the first day itself, I realized that around 20% of retailers are such who don’t keep products of the companies I was looking to research on, and hence, researching with these wouldn’t yield the results I wanted. When I passed through one such retailer, he was curious about what I was doing and why I was doing it. He had opened his outlet about a year ago, which was a small neighbourhood shop. After I told him my background, he shared a problem of high expiry that he faced in products of companies that do not compensate for the same. He was worried that if this did not stop, he will have to shut his outlet soon & would be out of business. I offered to help. While going through his store, I realized that he did not have Salesmen visiting his shop and used to buy most of his products from Whole-sellers. While going through the items, I came to know that products expiring early have been pushed backwards with newer SKUs of the same kept in front. I realized that he wasn’t aware of the concept of FIFO and had been following LIFO instead, leading to a lot of products expiring at his store. I helped him arrange the shop as per FIFO and also explained it to him so that the magnitude of expired products at his store will reduce significantly over time. He was highly grateful and moved by the help that I offered. This particular incident increased my research time for the first day from 6 hours to almost 9.5 hours (in scorching heat with temperature shooting above 40oC), but it also felt extremely fulfilling helping someone in real need of it."
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
"During my tenure as the Secretary of Student Exchange Committee at IIM Indore, we had to make a video showcasing the experience of Exchange Students who come to our college. My team members were divided about how we should go about it, with a majority believing we needed to hire a professional video consultant for the same. I disagreed with them. I was of the view that we should use the services of a company founded by IPM students at our college, as I saw their work on YouTube. I also felt that we would be able to achieve the task at pocket-friendly rates with them which would suit the budget we had. After presenting the team with these facts, I convinced them to show confidence in me and we went ahead with assigning the work to the in house company. The committee members worked really hard with Five Owl Films (name of the company), shot at times which wouldn’t have been possible for an outside firm and made a video which was well appreciated by the authorities & students at Campus. It was the first such video we made and was uploaded on the official IIM Indore YouTube Channel."
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 which has led you to do deep work in that field?
"I have been a religious cricket follower for a long time and started to participate in various Fantasy Sports Leagues about a year ago. Apart from what your gut says, succeeding in Fantasy Sports requires a lot of skill to account for different variables, such as the weather, pitch report, player stats, suitability to the ground and many more. Over time, I realised that all existing Fantasy Leagues are of 11 players each, where the participants have a cap on the number of batsmen and bowlers they play with. This has led me to think of a new idea of designing batsman exclusive/ bowler exclusive leagues because I never found comparing batsmen’s points with bowler's to be fair. Since my placement, I have developed prototypes of various such non-existent user-friendly leagues. I have also connected with over 250 avid Fantasy League Players to gauge their interests in these new leagues over the orthodox one’s that exist. The results have been inspiring, and I am positive, that soon enough, I will be able to make these leagues a reality, offering fantasy players higher flexibility."
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?
"With an amount as substantial as 75 Crores, I can think of a few things that I would like to achieve. I would love to use around 1% of this amount to sponsor a world trip for my mother, who has sacrificed a lot of her dreams for her child’s growth! Another minority of this money (say 8-9%) would go towards building up my own Fantasy League Start-up addressing the pain points of avid players looking for higher flexibility, on which I have done extensive research in recent times. Now for the remaining 90% of it. I firmly believe in two causes – conserving water for our future generations and making underprivileged women self - reliant. I would like to set up a Non Profit self - sustaining organisation for each one of them. One of these would be working to promote the importance of using water judiciously. It will also provide rainwater harvesting solutions for homes & corporates. The second would be an organization working for underprivileged women, imparting necessary job skills. It will also work as a conduit between them & businesses in need, enabling these women to lead a better life!"
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