In our list of India's Best 50 - the 50 Most Employable Students from the Class of 2020-22, 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, Saloni Palande, has shown an incredible amount of passion to achieve her true potential. Read on and find out her story!
The following are Saloni Palande’s set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top-50 Most Employable MBA Graduates of the Class of 2022. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated, Saloni's story and profile stood out. Here's her story in her 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.
I gave up on a high paying job offer from a Fortune 100 company to pursue my quest for my dream role. I believe that for those who can dream, there is no place as far away. I have always pursued what I want in my life, this incident was one of them. I had the most amazing experience of my Life when I interned with one of the fortune 100 companies. The senior management was extremely impressed with the kind of impact I was able to bring in a matter of two months. According to the status quo, It is the goal of every student to get a good SIP Company and convert it into a Pre-Placement offer. I decided to take the risky path of letting go of the option of accepting a full-time offer because I want to work for something that I am passionate about. My passion for Supply Chain Analytics is something that drove me to take this decision.
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
In January 2021, I along with the rural education transformation team of NITIE visited villages in rural areas around Talegaon. Our objective was to gather feedback on fun & engaging videos we had prepared for the kids. I was overwhelmed after the experience of interacting with the bright and curious little ones where I could see the hunger to learn and excitement in their eyes. I interacted with many children, their teachers, families, and activists of NGOs around the area. After talking with many stakeholders, I found that many of these talented kids drop out of school due to a lack of guidance & unawareness about the opportunities life has to offer them. This is where I came up with the Idea of Disha, A one to one rural mentorship program where students of NITIE provide one to one guidance & become a confidant of the young talent of India. The program is currently scaled up to impact over 100+ lives of rural children. This was not a purely selfless act as the satisfaction and happiness I felt after the successful launch and scaling of the program was something I cannot express in words.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
During my summer internship, my manager had assigned me a project on designing a product performance analysis tool. Midway through the project, he stated that he wanted me to only create the process for delivering the project objective. I conveyed my intent to automate the process to make it scalable across the department. But he asked me to focus only on the task at hand for creating the process. I decided to keep working simultaneously on the automation part as I disagreed with my manager. When I created an automated prototype, I presented the same to my manager. He was highly impressed when he saw my work and gave me the opportunity to present the same in front of the senior leadership of the company. Not only did I automate the entire product performance analysis tool, but I also created a user manual & provided training to employees on using the tool for different products. My work was highly appreciated by my manager and senior leadership of the company.
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 some level of comfort in Machine Learning. I took this subject as an elective in the last semester of my undergraduate graduation. There I first encountered the world of ML and its application. I innovated a hardware model of Artificial Neural Network during my final year project. The project received appreciation from all juries and the project was awarded as the best project of the year.After graduation, I kept pursuing my interest in the field through various courses available on MOOC platforms. Then, I realised how the roots of all these concepts lie in statistics. Understanding statistics gave me the ability to interpret figures & craft stories out of data. I could answer questions in interviews, had less difficulty in data analysis and operations courses in MBA. I also helped my batchmates in learning the wonders of this field & My friends call me analytical wizard at NITIE. This knowledge of statistics & ML helped me implement Machine Learning models during my internships.I think with the world evolving towards digitalization, future managers should be well equipped with data handling capabilities along with people handling capabilities to make informed data-driven decisions.
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 my strong interest in social entrepreneurship. I will divide the corpus into four tranches:Tranche 1: Self, Family & Friends (13.5 Cr)Repay my education loan & family home loan. Secure funds for my family & friends.Tranche 2: Rural Education Improvement: (10 Cr)I believe that educating young India can eliminate all the issues our country is facing from unemployment to gender inequality. I will start an NGO to facilitate education in underdeveloped and rural areas of India for a brighter future.Tranche 3:My start-up (20 Cr)I am inclined towards entrepreneurship since my engineering, I will start my venture in the field of technology to provide innovative solutions to not so obvious business problems. Tranche 4:Investments (30 Cr)I will invest the money in mutual funds as well as fixed deposits for future use. Also, I will save money for my further education.
Read the stories of the other Employable Graduates here!