Previous Occupation: Hindustan Unilever Ltd - Area Sales Manager for Madhya Pradesh
Sector: Education
Total Work experience: 10 years

Tell us about yourself – your profile, your professional life after ISB including your career progression.

Prior to the ISB I did engineering at Imperial College in London and after that I did Chartered Accountancy at Arthur Anderson. I then wanted to come back to India, so I joined the ISB. So I’ve basically done Engineering, Chartered Accountancy, and MBA which is a bit of a strange mix. After the ISB, I joined Hindustan Lever on the sales and marketing side and was there for about four years. When I was at Hindustan Lever, I was sent for a leadership course at an international company where I saw some of the amazing work that they did. And it wasn’t there in India, so I wanted to bring that work here. So I approached them after four years and said that I really would like to bring this work. So now I am working as an Executive Coach. I am working next week with high potentials from the Aditya Birla group and I have been coaching the directors and the senior directors of Crisil. Internationally, I work with Schenker in Singapore and Petronas in Malaysia. I work on self awareness, soft skills and other areas with senior executives. I am really enjoying this job because I can do consulting, write articles, travel around the world, and have lots of conversations with senior people. It is all about Psychology and writing a book, so it is pretty much my perfect job. As a trainer you can put in a whole bunch of elements and you really meet a lot of people, so it is fun for me.

What was your key takeaway from the ISB?

The key takeaway for me from the ISB was “no excuses”. After the ISB, I thought that there was nothing that I couldn’t do because there was nothing left to know. Earlier, I could say that I can’t start this sort of company because I don’t know this area. But now it is like nobody knows more than I know, after having worked with these professors. So now whatever I want to do in life, there are no more excuses.

How do you think the ISB has contributed to career growth?

Firstly, the thought that there are no limits now that I have done this. I have got all the knowledge that I need. And also I was very inspired by the vision of the ISB – a group of people getting together and saying this is what we want to create and the speed and passion with which they executed that vision made me think that this is possible in other areas and that was a great thought for me.

What is your vision for the School?

My vision for the School is to be the best b-school in the world. And we have really produced leaders for India who will take us forward and build a society that is prosperous and sustainable. People who want to do good for the country and are socially and environmentally responsible. They do things that are really meaningful to them and also contribute to others. That is my vision.

What are the strengths that the school can leverage upon and the areas it can improve?

I think the passion of the people and the idealism on which the School’s vision was built is something that can be leveraged. The area that I think can be improved is the focus on soft skills. Now that I am working in the industry, I see so much that can be done because ultimately what determines if people are successful or not is not just whether they can do the Black-Scholes formula but about how they handle conflict, how they handle frustration, how they handle motivation, how they deal with tough times, and how they go out of their comfort zone. All these things are never actually spoken about - things like creative thinking, structured analytical thinking, and thinking logically. These are things that are never really taught or if they are taught, it is just a one day lecture. But these are the things that differentiate the real leaders. I think that is something we should focus more on.

What are your personal interests?

Singing and Writing. I won the talent contest at the ISB in my batch and also went for Indian Idol. And I was also offered a contract to become a professional dancer on stage after I reached the semi finals of the all UK dancing championship.

What was your favorite place on campus?

It is just off campus, it is this entire rocky quarry where they do the mining and at night I used to go there every day, it is a beautiful secluded place. There were these fireflies there and it was just beautiful. There is a big rock over there and you can go to the top of the mountain and stare down at the lake underneath in the moonlight and watch the meteor showers, so that was great.

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