Previous Occupation: Group Manager, Business Analytics & Strategy Planning, Unilever
Present Occupation: Executive Director, Cogitaas AVA PTE Ltd

Sector: Strategy Consulting
Work Experience: 8 years
Interests – Professional/Personal: Reading, Adventure, Traveling,  Badminton, Cricket, Spending quality time with my daughter, Watching rib ticklers on TV, Movies

Tell us about yourself – your profile, recap your professional life after ISB including your career progression
I had a relatively fast career growth post ISB.

In 2007, I joined HUL as a Business Leadership Trainee. BLT is HUL’s prestigious flagship program which grooms future leaders of the organization. I was put through a rigorous 15 month program across marketing, sales, finance, strategy planning and production including a 1 month stay in a tribal village near Daman. You can imagine the ecstasy, the trials and tribulations of such an experience.

Post this program, I joined HUL’s Business Analytics and Strategy Planning function. Initially, I was responsible for Strategy Planning work in India. As my career progressed, I led this work across South Asia, South East Asia and Australia, while also guiding colleagues in Africa and central & eastern Europe.

The entrepreneurial bug bit me in 2010, and I co-founded Cogitaas.

The last one year in Cogitaas has been an exponential ride, with 360 degrees learning and growth. I have been involved in all activities of organization building – building solutions capability, training senior leadership, handling legal and administrative affairs, sales and marketing, client relationships and management. We are starting to see some clear signs of victory.

We are currently working with companies in multiple countries across consumer goods, luxury products, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, IT, telecom and retail.

Tremendously satisfying!

Describe your fondest memory at ISB
- Humbling experience of the 1st term exams
- "Leadership Lessons from World Lit” … an outstanding course
- Negotiation sessions during M&A course
- Mark-Strat Strategy setting over beer
- Mindless ISB gossip over tea

With the knowledge and experience gained at ISB, when looking back, tell us something that you would have done differently while you were a student here?
The one year at ISB became a medley of activities and interactions. I would have loved to hold on to at least one common thread through the year, and hone it to A+ level: maybe badminton, maybe a 9-month research project. ISB offers many choices and distractions. Need to keep a clear mind around it all.

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?
At ISB, I learned that people’s outer persona is complex manifestation of their IQ, their EQ and their egos. Therefore, when dealing with people, it is important to first understand people’s underlying drivers. This will enable building of longer term relations and managing of own and other’s expectations.

How do you think ISB has contributed to your career growth?
ISB enabled the bringing together 3 important drivers of professional growth:
- knowledge,
- peer and alum network, and
- leadership opportunities

The importance of these 3 aspects is emphasized time and again in my career.

If you have to sum up ISB in one word:
Opportunity 

What are the areas that you can contribute in to ISB?
Like any environment, ISB has its own mythologies. I would like to engage with students and guide them to think outside ISB mythologies.

I would encourage students to connect within themselves better, before trying to work out connections outside (professionally). Students need to clear distill their views on their aspirations, abilities and motivations.

I would like to emphasize the role of ethics, morals and leadership more than it is being emphasized today. The definitions of each have been diluted in today’s corporate world. We need fresh and deeper thinking to emerge from today’s B-schools.

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