XIMB: MBA In The City Of Temples

Like any other assembly line product of Indian education system, I found myself in a premier engineering college. I was good at Science and Mathematics, and if you are good with these subjects, you inadvertently end up joining engineering before you even understand the meaning of the same. It was during my pre-final year that I understood that core engineering was never my forte nor my interest. Giving up upon many lucrative jobs offers in core engineering I choose to work as a business analyst, in a leading analytics company, for the love of understanding the kind of problems Fortune 500 companies face in real-world.

Enrolling for an MBA program came naturally to me as after solving cross-functional business problems, I was intrigued as to how these business problems were identified in the first place. Because of this curiosity, I joined XIMB for my management course. I was a little apprehensive about coming back to academics after 19 months of work experience but my initial few days at XIMB changed my whole perspective about B-schools at large. I stereotyped B-schools as a place where the hypercompetitive environment makes it tough to make friends or where networking meant adding as many people on your LinkedIn or Facebook profiles as possible only. But in XIMB, the entire first week was lined up with so many events and competitions that you can’t just get around without making friends in both your batch and the senior batch. The bonding between the students is so strong here that even alumni came to attend these events.

Truly exemplifying the cultural heritage of Bhubaneswar; XIMB is all about rich culture, moral values and awesome campus life. Academic rigour here at XIMB is acclaimed throughout the nation. With participation in more than 50 case study competitions, students of XIMB have contributed to corporations with their innovative solutions to solve complex business problems. Though professors and seniors under the veil of tough academics are strict with us at times, at the end of the day, they are here to ensure that we are made industry ready once we step out of this college. With a legacy of 30 years behind me, I am proud to be the 31^st batch to pass out of XIMB and hoping to contribute to the legacy called XIMB in the years to come.

Which ABG Company would I want to work for and why?

If given a chance to work in the Aditya Birla Group, I would like to work for Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd. ABFRL being India’s No. 1 Fashion Lifestyle entity excites me for the opportunities I would get to learn particularly in the field of marketing. Being a marketing enthusiast, I am well versed with concepts like brand management, marketing channels etc. Moreover, I am a certified Google AdWords and Google Analytics professional and additionally having work experience in the field of data science I am acquainted with all the major machine learning algorithms which are used to analyze customer segments, the effectiveness of marketing campaigns etc. With data becoming an extremely important entity, organizations need techno-managers to become a genuinely data-driven company. I hope I can help Aditya Birla Group leverage on the huge amount of data available to become a more efficient and profitable lifestyle company not only in India but also on the global stage.

- Bikash Sahoo (BM, 1^st Year, XIMB)