Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire

About Me:

I come from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, a beautiful city on the banks of river Hindon. I did my under-graduation in Mechanical engineering from Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur (an autonomous state-government engineering college) and was awarded an honours degree. Currently, I am pursuing my post-graduation in management from NITIE Mumbai, one of the premier institutes for management in the country, also known as the mecca of supply chain.

I come from a defence family background and when normally a child grows up playing with toys and listening to lullabies, I grew up experiencing extreme passion and commitment towards duty. Discipline towards responsibilities and adaptability towards varied and challenging situations is something which I inherited from my father. I am a person who is always curious and eager to learn and to support this NITIE offered me an excellent platform for crucial industrial exposure. I did my summer internship at MARS India, the global chocolate giant. I worked on two strategically important projects with the procurement team and was appreciated for my contributions. Apart from this, I also did corporate projects with United spirits limited - a Diageo group company and Ericsson India. I have also participated in the corporate case studies and was the National finalist for Xolo-Snapdeal case study competition organised by SNAPDEAL and ‘Salahkaars –a Consulting case-study competition’ organised by DMS-IITD. I believe this helped in broadening my perspective and improved my strategic thinking capability.

I am the student coordinator for NITIE Alumni Association managing the Alumni relations for more than 6000 alumni spread all over the globe. I am also the campus ambassador for PAYTM and MBASkool.com and have the responsibility to ensure regular connect between the organisation and students through various events and activities.

I am also a very big sports enthusiast and believes that for a healthy mind one needs to have a healthy body. I won the recently completed NITIE premier league'16, the annual cricket tournament at NITIE. I also played soccer for my college team during graduation. I love exploring new places and diversity is something that amazes me.

Give us an instance when you failed miserably and how did you overcome that downfall?

I firmly believe that failures are very crucial part of learnings and the real failure is not to learn from them. During graduation, I, with my team, submitted a proposal for participating in Rube Goldberg, an event in the national level technical festival of IITK, Techkriti. We had put a lot of hard work for the proposal but the proposal was rejected. This was very disheartening for the whole team but I did not lose hope and motivated my team to give it another try. We tried again the next year with a more structured and planned approach and were shortlisted for the event. We not only participated but made a mark in the competition by bagging the second prize out of the 24 team from all over the nation.

What is the biggest risk that you have taken so far and why?

The biggest risk I have taken so far is rejecting two offers from different PSUs right after my graduation and instead took admission in NITIE. It was a big risk because, in general, government job is considered to be the biggest achievement but I declined the offers even against the resistance of people around me because I do not want myself to be restricted by the age-old hierarchies and stiff structures of these institutions and want to achieve big in my life and make my mark in the professional world and be a professional who not only works towards achieving the goals but also redefine the goals so as to be competitive with the changing times.

If you had a magic wand, what is the one problem in India that you would magically wish away? Explain why.

One change which I would like to bring, if I had a magic wand is towards increasing the reach of quality education to the underprivileged sections of the country. I have been associated with a small initiative named, Koshish, which is making efforts to provide basic education to the families who can’t afford to send their children to good schools and are helpless in front of the weak governmental education infrastructure. I will make the local government authorities responsible to ensure that every child in their constituency is provided fair opportunities for education and will also constitute a reward structure for good performance and penalties for those lagging in targets. I have a strong belief that education can eradicate a number of other social evils like child labour, female feticide, etc. An educated society lays down the foundation for personal growth as well as supports the development of community and the nation as a whole.

Saurav Yadav

'The Starting Point Of All Achievement Is Desire, Dream Big! Achieve Big!' - Saurav Yadav - Best50 - Class Of 2017