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, Rahul Choudhary, has shown an incredible amount of passion to achieve his true potential. Read on and find out his story!
The following are Rahul Choudhary’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, Rahul'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.
The decision to leave a well-paying job to pursue an MBA is both an instance where I went way out of my comfort zone to achieve something as well as one of the biggest risks I have ever taken. While I was in the final year of my B.Tech, I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to work at an Energy consulting firm as an analyst that gave me an opportunity to work with clients across the globe as well as travel to various parts of the world. It gave me a peek into the corporate world.Despite the compensation and growth being good, I felt a strong urge that I am not getting enough opportunities to realize my full potential. I felt that I was more of a people's person and wanted to work more towards management of people and devising growth strategies for the organization. Hence, I took the decision of pursuing an MBA. Preparing for an MBA was a task on its own, especially when the work easily got stretched up to 12-14 hours at times. I studied through the day or night whenever I could find time, saved money during the entire course of three years at the job to provide a cushion for the time I would be pursuing the MBA. Thankfully things panned out well, I got admitted to XLRI Jamshedpur BM program, one of my dream colleges. got a good internship during the summers and secured a PPO as well while received another offer through a case competition. Looking back at this instance, I feel a sense of pride and satisfaction for the decisions that I have taken, the hard work that I have put in, and thankfully, I was able to turn things around.
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act?
While working in Bangalore, I used to live in a rented flat. The maid who worked in the flat often consulted me regarding the education of her daughter. Her daughter had performed extremely well in the 10th boards, and she wanted me to meet her once. On meeting and thereby realizing the potential of the girl, I wanted to help her however I could in preparing her for Class XII examinations and engineering entrance exams.I guided her towards the preparation of exams and provided her with all the right resources for her preparation. I also gave her some financial assistance that I could for some books and test series. I was in constant touch with her throughout the two years of her preparation, even when there was Covid and frequently tutored her on weekends regarding any doubts or concepts. It gives me great satisfaction that I was, in some way, able to contribute to her journey to reach one of the leading engineering institutes in Karnataka (BMS Bangalore). Her parents were extremely happy and proud of their daughters success and thanked me as they felt she will now be able to turn their familys fortune for the good. I continue to stay in touch with her and seeing the gratification she has for me really humbles me and had made me realize that one small effort at our end can have a huge impact on someone elses life.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
While working in my previous organization, I identified a way that with a few tweaks, we can launch new product that will be less complex and much easier to use for non-frequent users of the product. I believed this will be immensely popular among the clients. However, my manager was reluctant to pursue this opportunity, explaining that he was worried about the additional development time and wasnt sure if the new product will be lucrative. Rather than giving up, I met with one of the key software architects to develop a plan to test out these new tweaks. We were able to reduce the development plan for a minimum viable product (MVP) from six weeks to just three. I also researched the market more thoroughly. I explored what other solutions that market had and got a feel for how our product would compare to the other options. When I re-approached the manager, I had a considerably better proposal. We could spend just three weeks of development costs and roll out this new version to just the existing customers on a trial basis. And since were not rolling out a new product to new users, its easy for us to revert the changes. Result: The manager agreed to this plan as a way to explore this opportunity. It ended up being very successfulin fact, it increased user spend by 20% for those users.
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?
Sincerely speaking I feel I am still too young to say that I have achieved expertise in any field. However, there are couple of things that I pursued relentlessly over the past few years.Problem Solving: When I joined MBA, I wanted to hone my problem-solving. One way to do that, I realised very soon, would be through corporate case competitions. And with 10+ case competitions in my kitty at various levels, including 4 National Finalists, a PPO, 3 PPIs, 3 National Semi-Finalists and 4 Campus Finalist rounds, I can safely say that they have played a key role in building my business acumen. After completing my MBA, I plan to share my expertise with my juniors at XLRI as to how they can excel and ace case competitions at various levels.Finance: Being from an engineering background, I had little knowledge of finance. However, while working in corporate world I developed keen interest in the subject. Going for MBA, one of my primary objectives was to understand various subjects of finance. I decided to major in finance and even during my summer internship I worked on M&A strategy that mainly revolved around financial modelling. I was also selected as one of the members to manage XLRI s student investment fund with more than 2 million rupees corpus.
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?
75 Crores is a huge sum of money and could definitely turn ones life around if one knew how to manage it well. I believe that taking care of personal as well as social needs is vital for satisfaction in life. Society: I would like to donate 15% of the sum to the education and development of girls and women in India. Our country lags significantly when compared to developed economies for development and growth of women. I would like to contribute in bridging this gap.Family: I would like to take 20% to help the needy ones in my family as well as contribute to my parents retirement corpus.For Self: I would set aside an appropriate amount of money to care for my current needs and travel the world. I wish to explore different cultures and see what the world offers in terms of experiences, stories and nature. I would set aside around 5% of the funds for this.For Future Self: I would set up a diversified investment fund for future needs and uncertainties. It would house around 50% of the funds. I would create a simple portfolio with a mix of high risk and steady returns in the short to medium term and design the portfolio in such a way that this sum grows y-o-y gives above-average returns. (Finally applying corp finance in real life!)Business plan: I have always planned to own a restaurant chain. I will use remaining funds, around 15 crores to open my first restaurant. I will open a restaurant in Mumbai with the objective of turning it into a multi-chain franchise spread across the globe within the next 25 years.
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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.
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