Updates and Information on upcoming events from the alumni association.
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New Leadership Programme in Infrastructure Management at ISB
Raj Kamal (Class of 2003)
Ajay Jain
PGPMAX Founding Class
Tell us a little about your family background/ history. How has it
influenced you?
My father was in government and every year used to get transferred to a
new location. This helped our family in dealing with change quite naturally in
our lives. My mother’s hardships in dealing with the uncertainties in the life
of an upright government officer’s wife and still providing best possible
upbringing to us gave many lifelong lessons and deeply influenced me for life.
Briefly describe your personal and professional achievements (including
recent awards/ special projects).
I have always been blessed with a great team all around which always
kicked me up in life and in my career. I had a great ecosystem all around, with
family and work, which always gifted me ample free time to try my hands in
variety of fields. I led a social services team and transformed a mental
retarded centre (which was shortlisted as 1 of the best 3 projects in India by
PMI, USA); I ran PGPMAX Founding Class exclusive girl-only orphanage campaign
(our class is privileged and proud to provide same and in some sense even better
facilities than our kids get, to 50+ young girls); I tried to transform the life
of many senior citizens by getting them to take yoga classes every day in
Gurgaon in 3-4 Bhartiya Yog Sanshthan’s centers; I have been an active volunteer
since inception of ‘running and living with a vision’ which aims to encourage
300 million Indians to join regular long distance running; I’m an active normal
marriage life counselor (couples and their families come from different cities
for result-oriented normal married life transformation). As all this doesn’t pay
me and in fact consumes almost 25% of my income. Hence, I need to work in the
remaining time in Xchanging, taking care of their Xuber commercial insurance
software product development globally. I was always blessed with
industry-beating retentions and engagement, and 360-degree customer satisfaction
scores throughout my career due to having an excellent team all around.
Tell us about your profile prior to attending ISB and recap your professional
life after ISB, including your career progression.
I graduated from a functional leadership role into a business leadership
role.
How do you think your time at ISB has contributed to your career and personal
growth?
ISB PGPMAX course gave me around 60 friends for life and ‘made’ my life
by completely transforming our orphanage initiative when our classmates adopted
it and took it to new heights. It is now aptly called PGPMAX Founding Class
Little Star Orphanage. ISB gave me tremendous tools, a framework to articulate
gut feelings into much better structured processes, ways to convince a board,
global CEOs, shareholders, etc. However, I wouldn’t say it helped greatly in terms
of vertical and monetary growth.
What do you enjoy most about your current career position?
Creating value all around and transforming the lives and careers of
1000+ employees and, indirectly, their families as well.
Briefly describe a typical day at work, in a way that illuminates the kind of
challenges and opportunities your role involves.
Blessed with a great team, I mostly spend time reading, coaching, and
getting us ready for the future.
What is the next new thing in the industry or vertical you are working in? Are
there any trends that you can identify?
“No-frills”, customized to individual levels, and aggregators service
economy (led by software) due to technological disruption, is happening all
around and will eventually reach enterprise levels as well.
What was the main highlight or most memorable aspect of your programme at the
ISB?
Great faculty and friends..
If you could offer a word of advice to the current class at ISB, what would it
be?
Enjoy more time with friends as eventually this is what you remember and not
what was taught in the class.
How do you feel you can contribute to ISB?
Rather than a direct contribution to ISB, if I continue to endeavour to make
the kind of contributions mentioned in #2 above, then I think that will be the
biggest contribution to society as a whole.