I Went On, Even When I Faced Hardships In My US Exchange Program - Shobhit Chandak's Journey Against All Odds

"Shobhit Chandak completed his MBA from IIM Shillong, where he was a part of the Marketing Club and the campus director for an UN-sponsored event HULT prize. He completed his summer internship with Deloitte Consulting in the Business Strategy domain, where he helped an educational NGO to design a sustainable operational model. Prior to that, he had graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) Degree from Christ, Bengaluru. There, he completed his Certified Management Accountant course and interned with NRB Bearings, Mumbai as a business operation intern, where he assisted the firm with the establishment of a new central warehouse."

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.

"In December 2016, I was selected for a Student Exchange Program between my college and Baldwin Wallace University, Ohio, USA. Although I was elated to be selected from among hundreds of students, I was filled with a sense of trepidation for what lay ahead, and I was worried that I would miss out on my family and my friends. I had to survive for a good six months in a city where the place, the people, the culture and the cuisine were different and strange to me. Initially, living in a foreign land was difficult as I was a vegetarian, and the USA is known for its significant amount of meat consumption. Further, the Indian methodology of teaching was a bit different from the one followed in the USA. All the odds were stacked against me, but then I realised this would be the phase which would either make me or break me and that I would have to choose between the two. I chose the former and told myself to make use of this opportunity while it lasted.

I participated in various clubs to engage myself and learn more about the various aspects of American education and lifestyle. I established relations with the other exchange students and enjoyed my constant interactions with them. I was always in touch with my family and friends back home, and although I had my share of low moments, I always strived to motivate myself and fight back. My time in the USA taught me how I could be my own best friend and my own enemy. My time at Baldwin Wallace University was an exciting experience. I can now proudly say that I survived the entire trip as a vegetarian and visited 33 different cities. My story does not end there. I was selected as the ovation speaker, and what made it more special was the fact that it was the first time that exchange student was given a chance to be an ovation speaker. My family and all my friends were proud of me. On the academic front, I was given the Dean's Award for my Academic performance. I carried forward the energy and enthusiasm that I had received from this experience and made full use of my third and last year in Christ. That year I also passed my CAT exam with flying colours, secured academic sponsorship, wrote research paper which was later published in the Asian Journal Of Research and cleared both of my CMA exams. All this in one academic year and the key to it is cliché but true - There are opportunities for everyone, but one needs to make it worth it.

Ultimately, the experience that I had gained from the student exchange programme taught me that we can learn only once we step out of the cocoon that we weave around ourselves. Change is the only certain thing, and the sooner we accept it, the happier we can be."

When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.

"When I was in twelfth grade, I wanted to give back to my hometown, Nagpur, the city that had nurtured me before leaving for my higher studies. I was looking for ways to do the same when I got an opportunity in the form of the Maharashtra assembly elections which were scheduled in November 2014. Nagpur’s voting had been low, and it was a matter of concern. My friends and I wanted to do something about it and change the scenario, so we initiated a movement called, ‘I AM RESPONSIBLE’, to increase Nagpur’s voting percentage. Through our young brains and brawn, we came up with a few novel ideas to motivate people to vote, and some of them are

• We approached various schools and colleges and asked students to motivate their parents and grandparents to vote. So primarily by targeting one student, we were reaching out to four adult voters.
• We used the incentive giving psychology which says that an act which gets rewarded gets repeated. So, we approached various shops and outlets across Nagpur and tied up with them to grant discounts to voters if they come up with their inked finger.
• To reach out to a broader audience, we enacted street plays across Nagpur in Hindi and Marathi languages.
• We created a lot of content which would go on our social media channels, approached the Media to help us spread the word and held press conferences. The result of the same was we were reaching out to people through various news articles, radio interviews and OOH Media.
• Now as we understand, this whole initiative would require funds at various junctures, and we came up with a very novel financing idea which was to collect WASTE PAPER from various people’s house and sell it to our partner paper vendor. I am quite elated to share that this movement saw its success. Nagpur’s voting percentage rose from 58.62% to 60.11%. Because of this event and its success, the Commissioner of Nagpur Municipal Corporation who was responsible to oversee the 2019 Lok Sabha election asked me to assist him to motivate people to vote, which was a fantastic opportunity.

The success of this movement boosted my self-esteem and improved my managerial and leadership skills. It helped me become a public speaker, network with like-minded people and immerse myself in social services.

Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?

"An integral aspect of my second year of MBA has been Festing. Festing involves many discussions to come up with an idea worth changing the world. However, to come up with this one idea, there is a series of agreements and disagreements. My team was called for the gold tier at Mahindra War Room, campus round of ReliancE TUP, and regional round at Hult Prize. During our team discussions, whenever a team member brought forward an idea, the other team member would play the role of the devil’s advocate to get the idea refined. So, when I came up with a series of ideas using Agri drones and Agri Robots, my team continuously told me the flaws in my idea. I started to get irritated, and subconsciously, my body started to show the symptoms of rejecting my teammate’s idea citing various reasons. Seeing this, one of my friends closed the meeting and told us to meet the next day. On our way back to our room, my friend inquired what was wrong with me, and I told him that all of them were hampering my creative juices and blocking my creative mind. The next day my friend and I went out for lunch, where he explained to me that the team was not trying to hamper me but was instead trying to make me think more and come up with more such wonderful ideas. Though there was a disagreement with the idea, there was no disagreement with my ability to think and generate more novel ideas. This conversation calmed me down and made me understand my fallacy and be more open to criticism during brainstorming sessions."

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 which has led you to do deep work in that field?

"We live in a world today where history has become part and parcel of our lives. Everything that we are today, we owe it to our ancient roots. One of the ways through which we can learn about our rich heritage is through the study of money. Money is the lifeblood of an economy, and all transactions today are centred around this essential commodity. I am numismatic, and I love collecting paper bills and coins from different eras, dynasties, states and countries. For me, this serves as both a hobby and a learning experience. I still remember the way I started this hobby. Back when I was young, I used to accompany my mother to the vegetable mandis for vegetable shopping where I would collect all the coins she would receive as change. I kept repeating this habit of mine until I had two full boxes. I started arranging these coins and was very intrigued to see that some of the coins had the faces of various famous people, and that is when I the embarked on my numismatic journey. I later studied this art under various currency gurus, understanding the various features of a currency, how to collect and preserve these pieces of history and understand the geopolitics of a region through my foreign collection. I am pleased to tell you that this collection of mine, which started with few coins is now a collection which will fascinate you for around 4-5 hours, i.e. the total time it takes to understand my entire collection and remember those coins with faces, they are called commemorative coins, and I have collected all the commemorative coins printed by independent India, from 10 paise coins to 1000 rupee coins."

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?

Well, to answer this question, I will use a slightly different approach. Time can be divided into three parts: The Past, the Present and the Future. In my past, I took a Loan for my MBA education, and I will repay that with the recurring income I generate from this 10 Million Dollars, although it will be a tiny part of the 10-million-dollar kitty. For the present, I would like to contribute to relief operations brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Lockdown period, I have been working with the Commissioner of Nagpur Municipal Corporation to make sure that everyone in the Nagpur metropolitan region gets food twice a day. Seeing the situation of so many hungry people, I would like to develop a platform to report any hungry person and connect them with our partner NGOs. I would invest around 30 Lakhs on the same. I will invest the remaining 74.5 crores in my future, which includes investing around 30 crores in startups which are changing the landscape of the construction industry. This will be a risky venture, and to hedge this, I will invest around 20 crores in prime properties and another 15 crores in Government securities. Also, this will be the ideal time to invest the amount. I will utilise the remaining 9.5 crores to check off my bucket list, which includes setting up an NGO for educating children and setting up an Ice-cream Café.

---

You will also like reading -

I Helped A B-School Dropout Friend To Find Direction - Dinesh Ramesh, InsideIIM's Best 50

I Used The Two Months Before B-School To Raise Fund For An NGO - Tanay Bagade's Journey To Success Against All Odds