I am a first-year student at Shailesh J. Mehta School of management, IIT Bombay. This is my first story.

I am going to tell a story about a man. We are going to talk about him not because he grabbed a hefty package or won any major corporate competition but because he did something that was never done before. The Man is “Nikesh Zalte”. The class representative of SOM18 batch.

He showed the true spirit of management by handling a post that is very crucial for the academics of entire batch. Let’s see how he changed things around for the batch.

He was elected by the batch in the second month of the first semester. The first thing he did was, he created a portal for students where everything related to academics was available. Be it lecture materials, submission, deadlines, everything.

For example, the assignment submissions, we used to individually send Emails to faculties. But now, there was a submission folder on google drive which was shared with the faculty who would stop accepting after the deadline.

The one stop portal not just helped the batch in the day to day activities, but importantly so during exam times, to find all the relevant reading materials, worksheets, solutions to discussed problems, even past year exam questions to prepare accordingly. Portal turned out to be of immense importance during placement season, which was a channel to sort people in preparation groups for mock group discussions, mutual personal interviews, and repository for preparatory documents, ranging from domain related information to relevant company insights. The CR was the epitome of leadership, collaboration and networking, His efforts led us all to bring out the best of not just us, but the best of the batch itself. Today that portal is turned into a website. Where everything including upcoming competitions and events is present.

He was very smooth with talking and negotiation. Professors believed in his innocent face and he extended deadlines to make our job easier. Today, from the janitor to HOD, everybody knows him. If I were to tell the best quality about him, it was the way he talks. The most important trait for any leader.

He listens to everyone’s grievances and issues. He will get out of his way to help anyone in need. He is the best friends with everyone.

Today everyone is his ardent fan follower. He started a phenomenon called “Zalteism” “Zaltan” “Zaltesh”.

The moral of the story is - When people are driven by individualistic precedence in one of the most competitive professional atmosphere, we can too, become like him. We can work for collective good, working in tandem to push togetherness to the next level.

A wise man once truly said that “Fight as a batch”.

Vishal Singh

The Man Who Made The B-School Life Easy - The Social ClassWork