Sector: Telecom
Total Work Experience: Around 10 years
Personal Interests: Travelling, trekking and foreign relations.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional life after the ISB.

I had about five years of B2B sales experience in the chemical industry before joining the ISB and I wanted to get into consumer marketing post ISB, preferably in a rural marketing role. I joined BP in a rural marketing profile based in Bangalore and now I work as a marketing manager with Bharti Airtel in Gurgaon.

What was your key takeaway from the ISB?

First and foremost, you take away relationships, friendships, acquaintances, lots of people who will help you out and learnings from good faculty. It is fantastic the way faculty shape your thinking. Along with the knowledge and the way they make you learn, they shape the way you think and that should eventually shape the way you approach your work. So that was fantastic at the ISB - the faculty was very, very good, very humble.

How has the ISB contributed to your career growth?

This is a business school that lets you get opportunities which you otherwise would not get and with the ISB brand, you would probably get a higher level of opportunity, good roles, very, very good recall within the organisation. So that’s where the ISB brand helps apart from what it obviously teaches you.

What is your vision for the school?

I think we need to continue being different. It would be great if we become truly world-class a few years down the line; It would be good to have one third of the batch or even half of the batch coming from outside, not necessarily from the western markets but also from the eastern countries such as Japan and China. The school has started to be and I hope it continues to be very contemporary. The definition of a B-school and what you learn there is changing and it should change because business is changing. But the B-school syllabus is very, very outdated. It needs to get contemporary; we need to be talking about green technology, green businesses, internet companies, and the whole new economy scenario. So the words that I would look for are contemporary and world-class. So if these two things come together it would be great.

What do you think is the alumni’s role in building the school?

We are still a very young school; our alumni are about ten years into the industry. So just by being known, by doing good work, alums can help build the brand. But what will take it to the next level is if we all behave according to the values that the ISB teaches us. As a community, we need to stand for a certain kind of behaviour, a certain kind of thinking, certain set of moral values, certain kind of ethics and integrity. If we come to symbolize that, that would be the biggest thing. The best thing that alumni can do is to always carry with them thought that they represent the ISB and it will colour all their actions.

Obviously we will also do things like helping with placements. What has been happening and should continue to happen is that the placement focus for the incoming batch should lessen. I think people shouldn’t be coming to the ISB for jobs. I mean there are multiple jobs that are there, there are multiple ways of getting it, ISB is definitely one of them, but it needn’t be only about getting a job. So alumni need to think about the kind of people the School admits. It shouldn’t be that they are just studying hard and expecting jobs. So that is the job of the alums, to come in, hold hands and tell them that what is really important. If the School can get more and more industry focused, company focused it will help. So that’s where alumni can matter.

What was your favourite place on campus?

My favourite place on campus was the LT. One thing about my class and section – they were very enthusiastic and very comforting, non judgmental. So you could say or do anything and they would be fine with it.

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