Ramalingam has been chosen as one of the top 30 most employable candidates across schools and programmes in India for the Class of 2015. He has one of the best 30 profiles among the 66 final round candidates who participated in the Best50 competition. The final 30 were chosen based on a combination of scores for the write-up below and the candidate’s resume.
What have you done at your business school which makes you stand out from the crowd?
I have been involved in various activities as part of my college. I have won the Innovative Empowerment Award for my success at Bizorion'14, been a campus finalist at L.I.M.E season 6 conducted by H.U.L. and C.N.B.C. TV18. I have also been National Finalists at various colleges and successfully run the Entrepreneurship Cell in our college along with serving for the Consulting Club.
But the biggest achievement that makes me standout from the crowd would be my venture,
http://www.dalchinitiffins.com/ .
It started off with a pain point that I shared with one of my classmates at our campus. The need for regular good quality meal. After some research, I found the need to be substantial, and I proposed the idea to my friend. He liked the idea and we started working on our business plan. After around 6 months of hard work and some new partners joining and one leaving, we launched our business in February 2014. We were happy to have started on a positive note with many customers floating in. We also had some investors interested before one of them approached us with a plan to shift base and increase our reach. We shifted our base and moved on to a new city.
The idea of starting up while on campus is in itself a big achievement for me as it surely makes me stand out from the regular placements oriented crowd.
What have you done in your life that you are the most proud of?
I have had my fair share of ups and downs but there were few events that I cherish the most. There are many events I take pride in, like the day I started my first venture, Splash Services and Solutions or the day I got shortlisted at J.B.I.M.S. or contributing positively towards U.K.'s largest integration program for Lloyds Banking Group while working for Tata Consultancy Services. But the biggest of them all are my acts on the social front.
From being an active member of National Service Scheme at Velammal Engineering College and volunteering at two National Camps to being a part of two student driven NGOs, Society for Welfare of All Things and Vaala Valara Valli, I have been highly involved in giving back to the society. From the small but significant act of donating blood more than 10 times or conducting and managing a record breaking blood donation camp, I take much pride and happiness in my contribution.
If there was one good aspect about your school that you could take back after you graduate -
One of the things you yearn for when you join a professional institute is to get opportunities to put theory into practice. There is no better place than J.B.I.M.S. for opportunities. Someone truly said that if Mumbai is the land of opportunities than the gateway to those leads from JB.
One of the best aspects of our school, is its focus on making us managers from day one. Unlike many B-Schools, our college doesn’t boast of many in-house faculties, its just 5 including the director. This puts the onus of running the institute solely on students and provides a great opportunity for us students to get the taste of managing our college hands-on and learn many aspects of finance and marketing while working on our clubs and committees. Whether it is to draw a marketing plan for the committee or college, to actually creating budgets and processes for the academic year, we are always given the responsibility.
With a galaxy of Industry Stalwarts as our mentors and guides, we are pushed to the ends of our potential to achieve the best results for our committees and clubs. This helps us gain a lot of real life exposure to different problems one would face after passing out of this wonderful college.
If there was one thing that you could change about your business school, it would be -
My business school, has many laurels to its credit. It has a unique blend of permanent & visiting faculties and a galaxy of industry stalwarts as its alumni. Incidentally our college is on the brink of change as we have just received autonomy and are moving to a new and renovated campus. We as students have also been a part of this change, and have contributed significantly towards making it a reality. With the new 3 in a box approach that our college is adopting the opportunity for students are galore.
But to suggest a change I would widen the intake of non-Maharashtra students. This brings in a diversity on campus with multiple heads working on solutions. We must also try to go international as we once used to do in the past and induct students from multiple ethnicity to get wide exposure and learning. This will surely add tremendous value towards making the students graduating out of our college as the next Generation CEOs reinforcing the popularly associated tagline CEO-Factory.
If you had to open a rival social network to Facebook, what would it be like?
Facebook taught us that we are a society of voyeurs. This idea worked for a sometime, but it’s on the decline as we see the disinterest in the site growing. This is also because of the privacy issues that have come up due to Facebook's monetary commitments. What could rival Facebook and eventually beat them is a targeted social network. Currently Facebook is a network for all. But as we have studied in marketing, one size for all doesn't survive the test of time. What I would like to make is a niche social network of like-minded people. This serves a larger purpose.
For example a community of all colleges would be one such idea. I had in-fact worked on a similar business plan called kollegebugle in 2010/11. It takes into account all social happenings in colleges. From covering events, to solving doubts to confessions and gossips, this site would cover everything to do with colleges. As students pass out they would move out of such sites and new students would join. This would be niche and targeted rather than one size fits all. The students who graduate and pass out can then join a corporate social network and thus involve themselves in social circles at corporate level. This would be the best plan to rival Facebook.
Final Question (Optional) - Who are you - Express yourself (Optional and you can do it the way you want - Text, Video/Audio (Embedding), Image, Infographic
Video about me :
Ramalingam Subramanian