Pankaj Poddar
Class of 2010
Co-founder, www.dwll.in
 


Previous Occupation: Senior Consultant at Ernst & Young (Finance/Strategy)
Present Occupation: Entrepreneur (Co-founder at www.dwll.in)
Sector: E-commerce
Work Experience: 8+yrs
Interests – Professional /Personal: Reading, travelling, photography and mixology.

Can you tell us a little about your family background/ history?
I belong to a very traditional Marwari family that places a strong emphasis on business. My father is a businessman in the real estate sector and my mother is a homemaker. I also have a younger brother who works in Mumbai and a younger sister who works in Pune. I was born in Seoni, a small town near the border of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, and my family moved to Nagpur when I was in the third grade. I lived in Nagpur until I graduated from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) with a B.E. and then went to the United States to pursue my M.S. at Virginia Tech.

Briefly describe your personal and professional achievements (including recent awards/ special projects).
Coming from a family that was very business-oriented and placed no emphasis whatsoever on education (in fact, education was looked down upon in some ways), it feels great to see that the outlook in my extended family has changed due to the course that I charted for myself. Many of my younger cousins now understand the importance of education.
On the professional front, my startup www.dwll.in was recently featured on Young Turks, one of CNBC-TV18’s longest running shows.

Tell us about your profile pre-ISB, and recap your professional life after ISB, including your career progression.
After graduating from Virginia Tech, I started working for Computer Associates in their Long Island office in New York. I worked in the office of the Chief Financial Officer for four years before moving to Bear Stearns, where I joined their Financial Analytics group. I was promoted from Associate to Vice-President within a year of joining. When Bear Stearns proved unable to weather the financial crisis, I decided to move back to India and joined ISB. Post-ISB, I worked for E&Y for 18 months in their finance/ strategy vertical.

Describe your fondest memory of ISB.
I worked extremely hard to get Shadow-a-CEO, a social responsibility initiative, off the ground (it was virtually my baby). In this programme, students from various institutions bid to shadow the CEO of their choice in an online auction, the proceeds of which go to charity. It was extremely satisfying to hear students speak about their unparalleled experiences with various CEOs through this programme. It was also a fulfilling experience because it was a way of giving back and making the ISB experience better, not just for my classmates but for future students as well.

In your personal life, how have you changed post-ISB? Do you see yourself doing something differently because you went to ISB? What has left a lasting impression?
I came to ISB with the notion of starting my own venture one day. The learnings (not only academic but also from my peers) were instrumental in giving me the confidence as well as the necessary mental toolkit to become an entrepreneur. It is extremely unlikely that I would have become an entrepreneur without the ISB journey as a part of my life. The people I met there (not just students but professors as well as others) have become lifelong friends and even family. The power-packed one-year programme gave me access to so many people from so many diverse people from so many walks of life , and the learnings I have imbibed from those experiences have been instrumental in shaping me as an individual and will continue to do so going forward.
 
How do you think ISB has contributed to your career growth?
ISB not only helped me realise my dream of becoming an entrepreneur, but also connected me with Parikshat, my classmate, who is the co-founder of www.dwll.in! What more can one ask for?
The ISB network has been of incredible help to me during my startup journey. We have reached out to ISB alumni on numerous occasions, from seeking their assistance in finding a technology services company to build our technology platform to getting connected with relevant contacts in the industry, and they have always been of tremendous help.

If you have to sum up ISB in one word:
Life-changing.

What was the main highlight of your programme at the ISB?
Meeting my then girlfriend and now wife Shweta Divecha, my classmate!

Word of advice for the current class?
Don’t get caught up in the minutiae but look at the bigger picture. The people around you, whether you believe it or not right now, are going to become your lifelong friends and maybe your family too, if you are fortunate. Just soak it all in because years from now, what will matter is not whether that one-time dinner at Goel was too salty or that you got a B-, but whether you connected with people. It is all about people at the end of the day. Everything else is secondary.

What was your favourite course/ class at ISB and why?
“Negotiatons” by Professor Dishan Kamdar. It was one of those classes that taught you skills applicable to every aspect of your life, personal as well as professional. And I almost spent a quarter of my bidding points to get that class. So yes, it was well worth it!

Was there anyone during your time at ISB who acted as a mentor for you? Tell us a little about this relationship and why it was valuable.
I reached out to Professor Dishan Kamdar on numerous occasions while I was at ISB and continue to do so even today. I look up to him and have always found him to be extremely trustworthy, with an uncanny ability to talk to you in a manner that always puts you at ease. My relationship with him has evolved from professor-student to mentor-mentee to a point now where I speak to him fairly regularly about anything and everything. I truly cherish the moment I first met him and am very thankful to ISB for making it happen!

What are the areas in which you can contribute to ISB?
If you ask anyone who knows me, one thing they will definitely tell you is that I absolutely do not shy away from voicing what I believe. And I think I can truly contribute to ISB by getting opportunities to address the current class, not only about the ISB experience but also how it shapes your life. I also believe that there isn’t as much emphasis on entrepreneurship as there is on certain other disciplines, and as an entrepreneur myself, I think it would be great to be able to talk to students about the startup life outside of what they learn in the curriculum.

What do you enjoy most about your current career position?
I had wanted to be an entrepreneur for a long time and my dream finally became a reality nearly two years ago. And although it has its ups and downs, just like everything else, the feeling of working for yourself is exhilarating. You are responsible for your successes as well as failures and the personal growth that comes with that kind of responsibility is a welcome change.

What is the next new thing in the industry or vertical you are working in? Any trends that you can see?
I certainly believe that www.dwll.in is going to be one of the big things in the interior design/ architecture industry! We are currently working on creating a platform that helps consumers find interior designers/ architects based on their requirements, and we eventually want to expand the platform and bring everyone from consumers and designers to furniture stores, artists and brands (i.e., the entire design ecosystem) on a single platform.
 

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