You need a lot more than just the power of persuasion to make other people take the right socio-economic decisions. For today's feature, it took not just determination, but also patience and good intent to convince a mother of 3 girls and 1 boy to send all her kids to school (and not just the boy). Saloni's compassion and the need to do good for society has found her a place amongst India's Best-50 Most Employable MBA Graduates!
The following is Saloni Vyas'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, Saloni's story and profile stood out. Here's her story in her words.
"I am a confident individual who looks at achieving excellence through constant improvement. I identify myself as a creative person and try to use my abilities to balance divergent thinking and narrowing down on the problem at hand to the maximum extent possible. I am self-driven and in my opinion, a successful leader is one who is able to empower others and helps them reach their maximum potential. I thus aspire to become a better leader by taking everyone along and helping them become better versions of themselves while I continue to work on my individual abilities."
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.
"During my tenure as the City Head of Gramiksha Indore where I was leading a team of 80 volunteers, we decided to put up a food stall at a two-day national math convention in order to raise funds for a resource centre – a library cum computer centre for government schools. This was the biggest fundraiser ever conducted in any chapter of the organization and needed huge funds. I convinced the team to allocate the funds and took personal responsibility to pay back the amount if things do not go as planned. The team was very positive about earning funds at first but by the middle of the first day, even the cost of goods wasn't covered, let alone earning a profit. There were other challenges in terms of the availability of team members. Even the marketing head of the team had been unable to show up. As I was leading the team as the City Head, I had to make sure that the team stayed motivated and that everyone’s efforts were rewarded appropriately. I spoke to all volunteers individually and took their inputs about how we could increase our profits. We discussed among ourselves and decided to change our pitching strategy and product differentiation. Thus, we could now attract more customers. We also offered product combos to people who were positively received. Thus, we not just earned profits but also ended up raising the maximum amount of funds ever raised in the organization in a single fundraiser. We also began the creation of the Resource Center in the city."
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
As a part of Project Street Meet during my 3-year volunteering stint with Gramiksha, we visited various slums to find out children who did not attend school and counselled them to get a formal education. I remember meeting a mother of three girls and one boy, who did not realize that there was anything wrong in sending her son alone to school because he would act as the bread earner to the family and not the girls, in her understanding. We went to a team of four people and it took us 2 days to counsel her and we eventually got all her children admitted to a school. That remains to be one of my most valuable achievements so far.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
During the cultural fest of our college, Aakshank 2017, we had a huge problem at hand. A crowd of 10,000 people had turned up, as opposed to 8,000 that we'd expected. We had invited Papon for the concert who hadn't reached the location yet and we were already half an hour late than the announced time. The crowd was getting out of control and had become restless. The core team took charge of various areas of the concert and employed bouncers wherever required. I took up the task of speaking to the people from the stage and keeping them engaged as my friends would go around with bouncers and guard various exits. I spoke to the crowd, sung songs and occupied their attention, asking them to turn their flashlights on et cetera. Most importantly, we had to ensure that no fight took place during the same as it could've led to a stampede. We overcame these challenges by keeping in touch with the whole team through walkie-talkies and taking spontaneous steps according to whatever was happening on the ground. We could thus successfully pull off the concert till the time Papon took over A and saved the reputation of the college.
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 am trained in Hindustani Classical Vocal music. I have also hosted a regional television show at the age of 7 and have given Voice Overs to various commercials for Big 92.7 FM. I have thus developed expertise in Vocal arts and performances. I was also a vocalist of the Bodhi Tree band at XLRI.
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?
In the current scenario, I would want to first help the Corona frontline warriors using up to 50% of the money. I would further invest the remaining amount in the smaller businesses which are facing difficulty in the current times. I would look at the idea behind these businesses and a stable business model to narrow down on the MSMEs or startups to support.
Also read -
Organised The First-Ever Hackathon In My Undergrad College - Zaid Merchant, InsideIIM’s Best 50
I Chose HR When Everyone Wanted Me To Do BM At XLRI - Sana Azeem's Success Story, Against All Odds