It is always a sense of great joy and excitement when students of
IIM Udaipur meet an eminent business personality. Preserving the legacy of industry interaction, the students of IIMU had the privilege of having
Mr. Raghuttama Rao CEO & Managing Director at
ICRA Management Consulting on campus.
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Picture Source : MMA, Chennai[/caption]
Mr. Rao started his excellent career with undergraduate from IIT Madras; post which he did his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, USA where he gained proficiency in Cost Accounting. Being a member of ICRA’s start-up team, Mr. Rao has contributed to developing many areas of ICRA’s business, including Credit Rating, Management Consulting, and Research. He has served on ICRA’s Rating Committee for about ten years and has experience across several sectors, including infrastructure, banking/finance, structured finance, manufacturing, and energy.
Sharing his experience, Mr. Rao first emphasized the importance of
economics and
accounting in finance. He said that most students and even industry experts in finance domain lack the conceptual understanding of accounting and economics and hence are unable to deal with unprecedented scenarios. He recalled the amount of struggle he faced while learning cost accounting but said that the hard work paid off in the end.
Mr. Rao explained that the students should come to know their strengths and weaknesses in deciding the career path. He stressed on focusing on those streams that fit with what the students are good at, and what they really enjoy doing. Hence, in terms of consulting, Mr. Rao asked the students to ponder upon two fundamental questions: “What is Consulting?” and “Am I fit for it?” before joining the field in the first place. He also explained that consulting is as much about people skills as it is about analytics. Exclaiming that at the heart of consulting is marketing; he said that communication skills, both verbal and written, are essential to the domain. He mentioned that though multi-domain knowledge is helpful in consulting, one should try to have an expert level knowledge about one or two fields and that one should be used to unprecedented situations as consulting usually presents with unstructured problems.
Accentuating on maintaining health, Mr. Rao said that one should always maintain a balance between money and fitness. In addition, he said that one should use this time in MBA to read as much as possible about many streams and decide which way to go. He also said that one should dig deep inside and figure out the right reason for pursuing entrepreneurship and exclaimed that in entrepreneurship, one has many bosses.
After the session, he was asked numerous questions by students ranging from how to prepare for the summer internship to the importance of certificates for various streams. The students of IIM Udaipur are glad and thankful they had the privilege of meeting Mr. Raghuttama Rao and get an insight into both consulting, finance and entrepreneurship.
