Name an instance where you wanted something and went out of your comfort zone to achieve it OR Tell us the biggest risk you have taken so far in your life.
The biggest risk I have taken in my life was to quit my full-time job just at the cusp of the pandemic in early 2020. I was working at a Mumbai-based tech firm, where I was hired straight out of campus after finishing my engineering degree. I spent nearly a year at the firm, starting July 2019. In my time there, I worked as a business analyst in the marketing team, developing dashboards, analyzing marketing campaigns and aiding the go-to-market efforts of the company's sales team. The work role was enriching and full of learning experiences. But what I lacked was a good mentorship. Due to personal issues from my reporting manager's side, there developed a sense of mistrust and lack of confidence in my work. Ultimately, the work environment started to get toxic, with public humiliations in team meetings and threatening one-on-one chats about my performance. By the end of it, I had to make a tough decision to continue with the firm at the cost of my peace and mental health, or to leave my first full-time job early on in my career, when a pandemic is looming and creating a bad job market. I sought counsel from my parents, close friends, and some team members of the company. Since I was not done with one year at the company, the HR couldn't shift my project or team to another group, so it had to be a quit or stay situation only. Ultimately, after careful consideration, I quit my job and served notice till May 2020. This was when several people were losing their jobs, the market was dynamic and uncertain and it was one of the biggest risks I have taken in my life. Since then, it has been 3+ years since I have had a full-time income. But my hard work and grit has paid off. In my first few months of bouncing back, I prepared for the CAT exam, and aced it with flying colors. I landed up in one of India's premiere B-schools- SPJIMR Mumbai where I topped my academics to be awarded positions in the Dean's Merit List and Marketing Area Top 5 list. I got to intern with InsideIIM before joining B-school, where I guided MBA aspirants in their CAT preparation and PI process. During MBA, I won HUL LIME (India's biggest marketing case competition), represented India at the global finals of Unilever Future Leaders League, and interned with Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) during autumn internship cycle. Today, when I look back, I must pat myself on the back for taking a significant yet calculated risk to uplift my career through higher studies. And next year I am looking forward to once again becoming a salaried earning employee, after 3 years of waiting, with one of my dream organizations. I can proudly say, that my big bet paid off and sometimes in life, taking a risk is worth it. As that famous sitcom saying goes- "If you're not scared, then you're not taking a chance. And if you're not taking a chance, then what the hell are you doing anyway?"
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act?
There is a famous episode from the sitcom FRIENDS that there is no one who truly performs a genuinely selfless act. The show was trying too uncover that most people have an agenda behind their actions- be it for personal or professional gain. So when I have to answer this question about a truly selfless act, I had to think hard. The answer came to me as I was scrolling Instagram. Why? Because Instagram is a part of this story. You see, my long term romantic partner is a seriously talented baker and pastry chef. For many years, she would send me pictures of her amazing culinary work, and when I would get to try them out, my mouth would be watering, craving for more desserts. But she is a modest person by nature, so she would find it difficult to accept her superior talents. So in June 2018, on a normal otherwise insignificant day, I decided to open an Instagram page where I posted some pictures of her baked goods and other desserts. To both our surprise, the content received unexpectedly high traction and engagement. This was the birth of my partner's home-bakery business which has been running successfully for the last 4 years, in a part-time capacity. My intention was for her baking talents to be discovered, so that she see its not just her so-called 'biased' partner appreciating her work. It was born out of pure selfless desire for her to gain the recognition she deserves. This thought unknowingly blossomed into a business venture where my partner has been serving delicious customized desserts like cakes, cheesecakes, cupcakes, brownies, macarons, tea cakes, and much more to customers across Thane and parts of Mumbai. We have more than 1700+ dedicated followership on our Instagram page (link - https://www.instagram.com/cheesecakeandmuffin/?hl=en) which I have been managing. With my entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen, I close orders with customers, execute content posting and engagement on social media, take customer feedback and maintain a data list of all orders placed. Till date, we have more than 1000 successful orders from 350+ customers who have a satisfaction of 4.7/5. We have catered to major weddings, engagements, anniversaries, festival bake sales, and birthday parties, including 2 corporate orders. Despite the pandemic hitting in between, and our fulltime education and jobs, I kept lending my support to my partner, and till date we are successfully running our venture, albeit in a part-time mode. So looking back, opening a venture with my partner was an act of selflessness. I have never taken a single buck from the profits made out of the enterprise. I support my partner simply due to my affection toward her, baked with my deep belief in her talented abilities.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
It is considered to be socially desirable to not be projected as someone who disagrees a lot, putting forth their own ideas and opinions onto others. But my personal experience would say otherwise, that it is sometimes critical to let your decision and ideas thrive, even when everyone disagrees with you. Case and point- let me take you back to 2am on a fateful day in February 2019 when I was returning to Mumbai after a delayed flight. At age 21, I was with my driver on the western express highway, somewhere on the Jogeshwari flyover, when I witnessed a bike stuck awkwardly behind a truck on the road. At first, it seemed like some repair work was going on, but I was curious and wanted to stop. My driver told me to ignore the matter and to keep moving as it was late in the night and it would be unsafe to stop in the middle of a road where vehicles run at full speed on empty lanes. However, I decided to let my opinion prevail and stood my ground to halt our car to check it out. Perhaps the Universe was trying to guide with some weird vibes rumbling around my self. So I decided to stop the car and check out the matter, just to be sure. To my horror, it was a young couple who had met with an accident. Their bodies were jammed up in the trucks rear end. For a split second, the horrific scene froze my body and senses completely. But upon realizing the urgency of the matter, I acted swiftly, and started stopped others for help to drag out the couple's bodies. Once again, no one was ready to help so easily, late into the night. Those who finally stopped, presented their own ideas about how to get the couple out. They were unconscious but breathing, so it was imperative to take them out of the truck's rear at the earliest. One auto guy said that the couple should be dragged out by injuring a significant part of their body allowing their easy slippage. Another biker suggested to lift a portion of the truck and then grab the couple out. With my basic knowledge biology but deep knowledge of mechanical engineering, I knew we could risk injuring any other parts of the couple's bodies, and we couldn't move around the truck too much for the risk of a spark causing a sudden blast. I assumed the decision-making role and with my existing knowledge and assimilated information from others, I presented my idea to use the bike stuck underneath the truck as lever to grab the couple out. Everyone agreed to the idea eventually, despite multiple protests. I could hear remarks about my inexperience, foolhardiness and immaturity but I kept a steady head to deal with the most pressing situation at hand- to get the couple to a hospital. Finally, my driver and I convinced the others about my plan, and we got them out. We transferred the couple using my car and another car, to the nearest hospital. We fulfilled all due diligence of form-filling and other procedures, while the emergency-compound doctors hastened to treat the injured couple. By the time the families of the youth arrived, the young girl had unfortunately succumbed to her injuries but the doctors were able to save the boy. I felt utmost grief and anguish at the former news. My body was swept with a sense of helplessness and a feeling of failure of having been unable to save both lives. Later, as I reflected upon what had happened after reaching home, I consoled myself by remembering the life I had saved, over the grief of the failure of not rescuing the other person's life sooner. Ultimately, I realized it was destiny that had put me in that place. I was glad that I acted with courage and compassion, and stuck by my decision that revived a person's life.
What is the one thing you can claim to have some level of expertise or depth of knowledge in - it could be anything - a subject, a sport, a hobby, a venture, an initiative that has led you to do deep work in that field?
Malcolm Gladwell's 10000 hour rule states a person can become world-class at a certain task with 10000 hours of dedicated practice in. While a Princeton study disproves this number behind the theory, I believe that the logic behind he principle is sound. That practice with dedication and interest, makes someone near-perfect in a field or endeavor. In that regard, I can claim to have expertise in a hobby I picked up since early college days- solving Sudoku puzzles. For someone who is not familiar with the game, the idea behind the classical Japanese Sudoku game, is to fill a 9x9 grid with numbers 1-9, such that every row, column and smaller grid box has non-repeating digits in it. My analytical mind was drawn to Sudoku early. As I developed knowledge of statistics, Excel and data analysis, I started jotting down details of my sudoku solving- specifically the time I take to solve a puzzle and the number of mistakes I make. I have used that data to even come up with my own process capability of solving sudoku puzzles, borrowing from techniques I learnt in my operations class during MBA. You can find my complete analysis here- (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/debrup-poddar_sudoku-process-capability-of-debrup-poddar-activity-6871815689859039232-DN7s?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop). I have made it a daily habit to solve each day's sudoku puzzle in the newspaper, take a cut-out of the puzzle and stick each day's puzzle chronologically in my personal diary to keep building as a cherished set of memories. In addition, I have also solved two books of Harper Collins Sudoku Challenge to keep myself up-to-date with my new techniques to solves puzzle of harder difficulty. The next stage in my journey of Sudoko solving is to keep building on my data collection, better my best solving time (4.75 min), improve my average solving time (10.5min) and reduce my frequency of mistakes (0.64 per puzzle). I also plan to take part in some Sudoku competitions, challenging my abilities in front of other experts of Sudoku. Hopefully by then I would have completed Gladwell's 10000 hours and do more justice to my Sudoku expertise claim.
If 10 Million Dollars (approximately INR 75 Crores) is given to you to use it any way you deem fit what would you do with this corpus?
If I had 10 million dollars received after tax, firstly I would be grateful that I have been given this additional wealth and make sure to use it fairly. Of course, I would ensure that the money came from the right legal sources without any malpractice. I would identify the potential areas where I could spend the money, with the help of extensive planning as I would be conscious of the fact that it is my duty to spend this additional gift of a corpus wisely. I would bifurcate the money initially into three buckets- personal consumption (20%), investments (50%) and donation (30%). This is because I would be rational in my decision-making and not splurge the whole money either on myself or for charity. I need to be smart about where the money is going, so a split ratio of 2:5:3 would be a good starting point. The larger chunk would go towards investments because this money will multiply for me in the years to come, through time-value-of-money concept. Personal consumption takes the least share because I am not a spendthrift consumerist who likes to splurge money on myself. Charity will always be there because of the values my family has imparted onto me. Starting with personal consumption, I have roughly INR 16 crores, so I would analyze the different channels in which I can spend this money. In this stage of my life, I would dedicate about INR 5 crore to a fund for travelling and leisure. I would keep another INR 3.5 crore for day-to-day operational expenses, and hand over the rest of the money (INR 7.5 crore) to my parents and grandparents. The money for the latter would be managed by me, but for their betterment, well-being and good health. For investments, I have allocated a total of 5 million dollars (or INR 40 crores roughly), out which I expect to invest most of it (65%) on real estate and other property investments, not limited to just one geography. The remainder (35%) could be invested in mutual funds, share market life insurance and health insurance. The remaining 30% of the 10 million dollars I receive ie equivalent to INR 24 crores approximately will go towards charity, with pure intentions and without any tax benefits in mind. For this, I would need to choose the right causes working in different domains. This decision would need to be a balance of areas between my personal interests/hobbies and social causes that are good for the people and the planet. I would choose of split of 65:35 for this amount. So approximately INR 15 crores will go towards causes like planting trees, reducing carbon footprint, cleaning beaches and oceans, protecting wildlife and converting zoos to sanctuaries. The remaining INR 9 crores will go towards the develop of football related activities, donation for healthcare equipment to local hospitals and donation of books to libraries that can serve children in need. This is the overall approach I would follow if I were given 10 million USD.
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