Before joining IIM Raipur, I had been working in the manufacturing firm at “Carborundum Universal Limited”. I worked as a Graduate Engineer Trainee for 1 year and was later posted as Quality Assurance and Quality Control In-charge. The firm provided me a platform where I could use my technical as well as management skills to accomplish the goals of the organization. As far as my educational background is concerned, I completed Bachelor of Technology in Ceramic Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi. I completed my Intermediate education (SSC) from Delhi Public School, Bokaro Steel City. I developed a certain liking towards pursuing an MBA when I was working with my previous employer and later when I worked as a part of middle management, I realized that I lacked in certain managerial skills that were necessary to get the best out of oneself as well as from the team members whether you are a part of the organization’s management system or not. So I decided to take the Common Admission Test which is the first step towards admission in any of the elite B-Schools in India namely the ‘IIMs’. I took the test and later when I converted the call from IIM Raipur and decided to go ahead with it, certain sections my surroundings criticized my decision as IIM Raipur is relatively a newer IIM and did not have its own permanent campus as yet. But all those perceptions had been proved wrong when I joined this prestigious institution. IIM Raipur is not just an institution where students only pursue their Post-Graduation, I would say that in spite of certain constraints which any new institute generally has to come across with, it creates an efficient and effective ecosystem for leaders. I believe that if you want to be a subject or an area expert then you must grab opportunities from where you gain some extra knowledge for the concerned field and since Operations Management is the field that I have a lot of interest in, I have opted for this certification course as I believe that since this course covers almost all the important theoretical concepts which are necessary for an International trade it will help me understand International Operations better. International Trade Operations is a certification offered by Trade and Beyond and it covers the essential aspects of the entire trading cycle of imported products and exported products as well. It starts with the relevant export-import policies in India and goes on to discuss the Incoterms. It then covers the documents required in trading and the payment methods involved in settling the trade transaction. It also provides an overview of the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) payment system. The course is offered in the form of six modules and it hardly takes two to three weeks to go through the modules thoroughly. The concepts of trade discussed in the ITO modules are described in quite a straightforward manner that helps to quickly understand most of the relevant fundamentals. The modules are in the form of presentation slides which are very pleasant and interactive. A set of MCQs is the part and parcel at the end of each module to test the level of understanding. Every aspirant is advised to take a mock test in order to find out the pain points and clear the concepts before appearing to the final test. Final test consists of 60 multiple choice questions. First 50 questions are easy. Following 8 questions are application based and moderately difficult. Last 2 questions are jackpot questions which carry 10% of the total marks. The major issue in these two questions is its accuracy in answering. These 2 questions contain 5 blanks each. If any of the blanks is filled incorrectly, 7.5% of the total marks are lost for each question (taking negative marking for wrong answers into consideration). I completed the course in 5 days dedicating 4 to 5 hours per day. In the mock test, I scored 85 out of 100 completing the test in half of the total allotted time. This made me revise the pain areas once again. Finally, I sat for the final test in which I was supposed to answer 60 multiple choice questions within 60 minutes. I scored 97 out of 100 which is the top score among the participating IIMs and other B-schools in Trade and Beyond national challenge 2015-16. This is my journey in short till now and hope to achieve greater heights in future…