The Campus In The Heart Of The City - Devdutt Upadhye, SBM: NMIMS Mumbai

My first MBA interview at my eventual college. My mom and I drove down to Mumbai from Nashik, leaving on the evening before the interview. Leaving the relative comfort of my routine Central Line commute, we turned right, into the belly of the Financial Beast, the Western suburbs of Mumbai. Coming down SV Road, the first sight I had of the college was the large NMIMS sign adorning the side of the building.

I’d heard tales of the College without a Campus, but upon entering into the building, the first thing that struck me were students hanging about, loitering leisurely here, moving purposefully there. Sure, it wasn’t the quintessential MBA campus that people envision while contemplating about an MBA campus, but this WAS a campus all right.

June 2018

A couple of days prior to the start of term, my aunt, a proud NMIMS alum, was showing me around the campus, a ride along the myriad narrow lanes and “khau gallis”. I slowly realized an important point about the campus that would be my home away from home for the next 2 years. True, the college did not possess the kinds of campus that other colleges I’d been to did, but it DID possess an entirely different kind of campus, viz one of the most prime areas of one of the Major World Cities. This was the first unique quality about this place to have struck me.

June 4 2018

My first day here. An experience and ambience entirely antithetical to the one I’d experienced on my first day at my previous alma mater, the Grant Medical College and JJ Hospital, Mumbai: A first-rate, legacy institute in its own right. Gone were the old and dingy naked brick walls of the Anglo-Gothic construction to be replaced by the chic and swank of one of the best auditoriums I’d been in. Gone was the slow, lazy Government operated campus, replaced by a fast-paced, boisterous cafeteria with all the hustle and bustle that comes with catering to hundreds. Getting into an elevator, usually an inane and mundane task was made special thanks to the unique open-styled architecture and the equally novel (to me) capsule lifts.

The view from the glass capsule when on the 9^th floor was a sight that’ll long live in my memory. My college, the place where I would be studying and doing much more had just reminded me of my trip to the Cologne Cathedral and its nave. I doubt many colleges in the country would be able to do that. I cannot wait to see what other surprises this edifice has in store for me, and I’m already sure it has PLENTY.

Located in Vile Parle, as close to the heart of the financial nerve centre of the country as you can get without disturbing it, NMIMS has always had a HUGE locational advantage over most other Management Colleges. I received a timely reminder of the esteem that the industry holds the college in when I received a mailer sent by InsideIIM, a popular student magazine, on behalf of two of the most prestigious and sought-after recruiters in the country, HUL and ABG to incoming students of the Top 10 MBA colleges in the country, as deemed by the recruiters themselves.

It was an invite to a Meet and Q&A held in Mumbai. In the city, I reached the location at the prescribed time. What followed was an enriching couple of hours thanks to the HR department of the ABG and two of their young recruits whom they had brought along. The ABGLP, a leadership program devised by the Group to recruit, train and promote from within the executives and leaders for tomorrow was a particular highlight. Seeing how a 100+-year-old family owned company, with over 44 Bn Dollars in revenue continues to evolve and transform is striking.

Working for such a company, with a storied past and yet a dynamic future which clearly values individuality and prefers creating rather than hiring leaders is surely a company to aspire to work for. Personally, Peter England has always been my personal choice for formal and semi-formal shirts mostly because they were the only ones that fit me off the rack. I would love to try and repay that favor by helping strengthen the brand in my own tiny way. Fashion is also a field that scares me, and facing fears is the only way to truly conquer them.

So win-win.