Previous Occupation: Associate Consultant with ZS Associates
Present Occupation: Manager - Corporate Development with ESPN Star Sports (ESS)
Sector: Sports Broadcasting
Work Experience: Over 5.5 years
Interests
Professional: Keeping track of the emerging trends in the sports and media landscape, upcoming sports talent and talent development activities happening in India.
Personal: Spending time with family, sports, Naruto and movies (especially animations).

Can you tell us a little about your family background/ history?
I was born in Rajasthan, but my family has been based out of Kolkata for the last 20+ years - this effectively makes me a pseudo Bengali. My father is a Chartered Accountant and my mother is a housewife.

My father has been a guiding force in all my endeavours - academic or professional. Having risen to the top in the corporate domain over the last 30+ years, he has seen it all and I count myself lucky to be able to seek his advice whenever I need it. My younger brother and I share a passion for sports, and whenever possible, spend lot of time watching and discussing it.

The other two ladies in our family, my wife and my brother’s wife, are both MBA housewives, which means they get to invest, harvest and spend their money from the comfort of their homes, much to my and brother’s envy!!

Briefly describe your personal and professional achievements (including recent awards/ special projects).
With the growing imbalance in the work-life aspects of our everyday lives, every positive personal development sounds like an achievement. But to be specific, I think the fact that I managed to get married two days before the first term exams and do well would rate as a top personal achievement.

On the professional front, I think being recognised by our client, Pepsi, for outstanding performance as the end-to-end project manager of the Pepsi T20 Football tournament (a seven-city national football tournament organised by ESS for Pepsi) was quite special. It stands out further because this was my first assignment at ESS and the first such project that ESS was executing in India.

Tell us about your profile pre-ISB, and recap your professional life after ISB, including your career progression.
Prior to ISB, I spent over two years working in the analytics domain with ZS Associates. While the exposure to analytics had been amazing, I longed to learn more and more about other aspects of business and not just the analytically-driven functions, and thus, I pursued an MBA.

The break did wonders for me. It gave me the opportunity to learn something new, review my goals and focus on what really excited me - sports. While the pursuit of regular jobs at ISB continued, I started to research and speak to more and more people in the domain. Despite the feedback that the industry was a poor paymaster for starters, I was convinced that I wanted to test the waters and hence took the plunge.

Post-ISB, I joined a sports management agency called IOS Sports & Entertainment. The company was active in the sports celebrity and event management business. I got to experience the industry and its dynamics from very close quarters and learn the ropes of this business. Post IOS, I moved to ESPN Star Sports as a part of its newly formed Event Management Group and then went on to work with the MD’s office on various strategic initiatives.

Describe your fondest memory at ISB.
I think the most memorable ISB experiences are those associated with those long MARKSTRAT sessions. Our group really pulled itself through the long all-nighters and tight deadlines and really gelled well. It’s a different story that we finished last in the entire exercise - but we did not fret too much over that. We all became great friends.

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?
On a personal and professional level, I think I have become a lot more perceptive. The one year at ISB spent working with students from diverse walks of life (lawyers, commerce grads, journalists, doctors and many more) was an enriching experience - more so because prior to ISB, I had only worked with people from engineering school backgrounds. There was a certain type of colleague personality I had grown used to. ISB helped me get rid of that mindset and that experience came in really handy when I switched to the sports management domain.

How do you think ISB has contributed to your career growth?
ISB gave me the opportunity to understand businesses and business ideas from all perspectives and not just selective angles. The credibility that the ISB name brings to the table when one is looking to build business relationships is another leverage point and one that I hope will only get stronger in years to come.

If you have to sum up ISB in one word?
Melting-pot!!

What was the main highlight of your  programme at the ISB?
I think the opportunity to interact with faculty from all parts of the world was the one of the biggest highlights. Having graduated from an engineering college, I had a different picture of professors in my mind. At ISB, every new faculty member had a different style of teaching; sometimes they were not teaching at all, it was just a plain discussion until you realised that he/ she had managed to run through the study material for the day without even referring to it or asking us to refer to it.

Word of advice for the current class?
Learn as much as possible - from different courses, faculty and fellow students. To quote Aamir Khan from the movie 3 Idiots: “Chaaron orr gyan bantt raha hai, jahan se mile lapet lo” (I may not have done as much as I preach, but in hindsight I should have). Also, don’t worry about good jobs - they will come.

What was your favourite course/ class at ISB and why?
There are so many to choose from. But three courses really stand out:  Decision Models and Optimisation (DMOP) by Professor Milind Sohoni, Marketing Decision Making (MKDM) by Professor Jagmohan Raju and Competitive Strategy by Professor Prashant Kale.
About DMOP - The crux of the course was never supposed to be difficult to grasp for someone from an engineering background, and it wasn’t. But the way Professor Milind structured the models (which were actually day to day problems faced by businesses) was refreshing. The focus was not so much on solving the problem but structuring it in the right manner.
In MKDM and Competitive Strategy, the professors structured the cases, the discussions and the final takeaways in such a beautiful manner that for someone like me who had not been exposed to the strategic marketing or competitive strategy aspects of business earlier, everything looked so simple, logical and clear.

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.
There were quite a few batchmates and alums that I counted among my mentors, and I was lucky to have got some really good advice and direction from them whenever the need arose.

What are the areas in which you can contribute to ISB?
I would love to contribute to ISB by helping out in admission interviews and student mentoring activities.

What do you enjoy most about your current career position?  
The fact that my work directly or indirectly impacts the sporting domain in India acts as a great motivator. Sports broadcasters will continue to play a pivotal role in developing sports in India just like they have done everywhere in the world. We just have to figure out how we can make it a win-win situation for both - the sport and ourselves.

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