About Me

I am a Final Year student in IIM Kashipur PGP Program. I am specialising in Operations and Marketing. Before joining IIM Kashipur, I worked in my own venture (Drift Advanced Designs) after completing my undergrad in Production Engineering.

My journey has been very drifting from my school days as I was more inclined in engineering especially in Mechanical.

When I joined NIT Jamshedpur, I was the part of the Formula car manufacturing team (Team Drift) in Suspension Department, in the same year we qualified for Japan (FSAE Japan) as only a few Indians teams in top 100 in any FSAE events.

I was the Managerial head of the team and looking for the Sponsorship, PR and other related events apart from the technical, while I was involved in the managerial part I discovered that I am enjoying management more than the technical part and then decided to move toward the management side and started preparing for CAT.

In the year 2014, I and three others students from the same college thought to start our own venture on automobiles which would not only provide the opportunity for automobile sector but also bring new technology in the same segment.

We started the start-up (Drift Advanced Designs) in Bangalore in the year 2014 as a private limited company and I was acting as Co-Founder and CBO for the companies.

We were not planning to go to investor for investment as could make lots of money by giving workshop at different college and then investing the same money in research and development but after six - seven-month we started facing problem related to management and due to less knowledge in automobile we weren't recruiting new people in the management team.

One fine day I realise that to start any venture, someone need to be very much clear in the management so I decided to go back to my studies and then I joined IIM to learn management from one of the best faculties in India and implement once I would pass out.

In the first year at IIM, I and with four other people started the first ventures in small cities like named "Grub-Bite " Delivery of Food from Top restaurants of Kashipur at night.

Now there was a huge change in me from my first venture to the second venture as now I was seeing whole management aspect which I was missing in my first venture.

I got a summer internship in Droom Technology Private Limited which was one of the platform for me where I was able to do my own project and implement any new marketing techniques I learn from the class in the company.

I introduced many new products like ( Algorithm for prediction who will win IPL ) for the company which brought them huge exposures on social media.

Droom provided me huge exposures in digital marketing and after spending two months with the companies I learned a lot and after few month I enrolled myself in digital marketing certification received master in SEM/SEO which provided me more knowledge in the same domain,

I believe improvement will come step by step and today I learn every day from my class, professors or peers and implement the same in my venture.

I have been fortunate enough to have served in leadership roles on a regular basis since my school days. My stint as the school head-boy gave me an early start at learning effective communication and conflict resolution. I was the District Basketball player and apart from the basketball, I was a yellow belt karate belt holder and was school chess player.

My biggest takeaway from MBA is developing the ability to look at an issue from different perspectives. I believe that I am ready to apply myself in the corporate world and am looking forward to the exciting challenges that await me there.

Tell us about your non-academic activities and achievements

I was very much interested in sports and I represented my schools, college in National Sports events and apart from the basketball player I represented my school in the painting competition.

I was school level Karate player and represented my school in inter-school Karate championship where I secured in top 10 in 2008.

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

The day when I could see my first venture was going to be shut down due to lack of management and others problems, then I decided to get involved and to be in the market we need to earn money and this could be done by giving workshop across India. We gave around 90 Workshop and earned more than 7-8 lakhs which avoided the money problem and we started saving the money for the worst condition. The idea of the workshop was small but when you are in the worst situation, this kind of idea are difficult to click in your mind but I overcome it month after month.

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

In my graduation, the third year when we planned to start our own venture was one of the risks that I have taken so far because we were not aware of anything how a start-up work and how much worst condition could be and none of us experienced enough to tackle that situation.

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

The one problem that I would magically wish away is being late every time and most of us have the tendencies of being late which reflect a bad attitude toward your work and even toward your country.

As I follow "early to bed early to rise make a person healthy, wealthy and wise, so in the same way our country should follow " early to work late to home make our country proud".

shashank0812

'No One Could Defeat You If You Are Following The Right Strategy - Shashank Shekhar - Best 50 - Class of 2017