Previous Occupation: Business Head with Lowe Lintas (Prior to ISB)
Present Occupation: Head – Marketing, South Asia with Baskin-Robbins
Sector: FMCG/Retail
Work Experience: 8+ years
Interests – Professional/Personal: Writing, music, poetry, running, trekking and reading

Tell us about yourself – your profile, recap your professional life after ISB including your career progression
Immediately after graduating from ISB, I started working for Baskin-Robbins as Head of Marketing – South Asia. One year and some marketing initiatives later, the fire (or now, perhaps the “ice cream”) in the belly is still very much there. Recently, we won an award for being “The Most Popular Brand of Ice cream in India,” for our marketing efforts in the year 2010-11. This gives me immense pride and yet, humbles me, especially when I think of the challenges that lie ahead. Advertising, consumer promotions, research, pricing strategy, digital marketing and new product development are some of the areas that keep me busy. This pretty much summarises my “after life” since ISB.


Key take-away from the ISB.
My 7-month long ELP (Experiential Learning Programme) project, which was about developing a digital marketing strategy for all the brands of United Breweries, was perhaps the biggest take-away for me. I came to ISB knowing that I wanted to strengthen my understanding of digital marketing and this was just the right project for me. I had a fantastic experience of working with a dynamic team of fellow ISBians and also had several enriching interactions with our illustrious client. The knowledge that I gathered from this project on digital media is definitely helping me today in my current role.
Besides that, I recall the privilege of doing a brand audit of ISB while on campus for my Independent Study course. This 3-month long project, which I managed along with several academics, helped to sharpen my marketing acumen and gave me a chance to have closer interactions with all the stakeholders who are managing this institution.
Apart from the academic-related activities, I have fond memories of living and staying together in a captive environment with a large and diverse group of batch mates. ISB gave me the chance to build these lifelong relationships. I cherish each and every interaction I have had on campus.


How do you think the ISB has contributed to your career growth?
ISB made it easier for me to make the transition from advertising to managing a brand on the client side. Otherwise, getting to this position would have taken much longer.

What is your vision for the School?
I see ISB as a leading institution for management education with a strong understanding of emerging economies and long-term industry linkages


What are the strengths that the School can leverage upon and areas it can improve?
Brand equity is ISB’s biggest strength and this needs to be maintained with a lot of care. Other than that, expansion of batch size needs to be controlled, so that we focus more on the quality of students rather than quantity. We also need to improve upon the quality and number of in-house faculty, apart from forging stronger industry linkages.


How do you think alums can associate with the School or alum’s role in building the School?
We need to involve more alums from non-consulting backgrounds. At present, I see a lot of involvement from alums who are in the consulting space but not as much from those who are in other spheres.
Alums need to be more involved at the functional and academic levels. For example, we need to look at building functional teams, in the areas of marketing, retail, finance, etc, for knowledge-sharing sessions. Alums can come in as guest speakers, or help the current batch of students in interview preparations, etc. They can also be part of an advisory committee, which gives constructive inputs to the School in the areas of development and growth.


What is the area you can contribute in?
I would like to participate in any form of student interaction, be it “meet and greet” sessions, knowledge-sharing sessions on marketing, brand management or retail, and in workshops, interview preparations, resume reviews, etc.
Also, I would like to help the School in planning its marketing efforts, managing and building its brand equity, conducting regular brand audits, initiating industry linkages, etc.

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