I have more than 13 years of technology consulting experience with Tata Consulting Services (TCS). Currently, I am a lead technology consultant managing a team of 11 associates and a client portfolio of $9M in annual revenue. Now, in the short term, I am looking to upskill by business acumen and leadership skills to fast track my career growth with the technology consulting domain so that I can break through the glass ceiling and grow into a senior leadership role such as VP/CTO in an IT consulting firm.

Raised in a working-class family, I had the importance of education instilled in me from the very beginning. This heavily influenced my decision to pursue engineering. I started my career in TCS in 2007 and loved the kind of technical challenges I was solving for clients. Fortunate to get a project leadership role early in my career, I developed my leadership skills thereon. Now, after 13 years, I have led teams as large as forty associates and client assignments across four international countries, including US, UK, Germany, and Netherlands.

However, now my career growth is flattening; my work scope has not broadened and is limited to technology consulting only. I am hitting a glass ceiling due to my bachelor’s education and technical expertise only. From here onwards, I want to upskill and retool myself to accelerate my career further and break into corporate leadership’s upper echelons. I aspire to be not only a project leader but also a mentor and a visionary leader overseeing business strategy and growth. However, to succeed in this journey, I have to master business acumen and strategic leadership and mentoring skills that are hard to acquire in my current job, and I believe an MBA from a world-class institute like IIM Calcutta would be a perfect place to be.

After researching multiple schools and programs, I am confident that IIM-C EPGP will give me the launchpad I need. The courses such as Designing Effective Organizations, Strategic Management and Marketing Management and Mergers, Acquisitions And Divestments, etc., can equip me with the knowledge to be a successful leader and a mentor.

In today’s world, with expanding competition, understanding how to apply theoretical knowledge to solve real-world problems is the key to success. Therefore, I am very excited about the unique lecture series by industry leaders, which can give me insights into how they solved real-world problems and an opportunity to get mentored/guided by these visionaries. The placement statistics with the IT service/product industry dominance also make IIM-C a perfect place to be.

Over the 13 years, I have learned that the highest yielding investment is in people and the relationships that one establishes. At IIM-C, I can build long-lasting relationships with future industry leaders and alumni to create value for myself and my peers while achieving my career aspiration. That’s why I think an MBA from IIM Calcutta would be a perfect step at this point in my career to accelerate my career development.

My journey through life has led me from a small town of Himachal Pradesh to being the Technical Advisor for the director of India’s largest steel plant. Over the course of 8 years, I have grown from operating furnace in shifts at shop floor to leading key digitization initiative. Now, after 8 years, I am aspiring to expand my academic horizons and diversify my experiences outside of steel industry.

I grew up in a middle-class Punjabi family where money always fell short of aspirations. I completed most of my early education in low cost vernacular medium school and despite the struggles, I got admission into NIT Jamshedpur. At college, I got elected in college secretary committee and built competitive cricket team, which I led as a captain to win Inter NIT national tournament.  My achievements in extracurricular domain helped me impress my interviewers at JSW Steel, which was one of the most coveted opportunity for a metallurgist at campus placements.

At JSW, early in my career, I gained significant experience in leading shop floor workforce and cross-functional teams of up to 150+ individuals to successfully commission automation systems in 15 furnaces, which have created new benchmarks in Indian steel industry. My work won multiple accolades in Metallurgical Community (National awards) as well as organization (youngest recipient of JSW Exemplary award). In recognition of my achievements and technical proficiencies on shop floor, my director gave me the opportunity to be his Technical Advisor (TA).

In my role as a TA, I have led multiple initiatives on technological improvements in steel plant. For example in collaboration with consultants from BCG, I designed and implemented globally competitive data models for planning, predictions and optimization. Overall, I believe, my projects improved operational efficiency by 7% and generated savings of 340+ Crores, helping the organization attain cost leadership in India.

Now, after 8 years of solid hands on learning and team leading experiences, I intend to work as operation consultant with firms such as Accenture or Vector consulting group, where I can leverage my experience of combining digital innovation with operations-management and work on large scale strategic projects. However, to make this shift, I need to upgrade my skill set and academic knowledge outside of steel industry and this is where I believe a business education is a much needed input. Towards this end, I believe that MBAEx would give me the right direction and open doors of opportunities.

After extensive research, I believe that through its analytical pedagogy and courses on Cost Management, Statistics and Problem Solving, MBAEx will serve as a perfect pit stop to fulfil my current need of understanding business from a multidimensional perspective. Being a part of diverse class, I will get to learn from multidisciplinary experience of my peers and world class faculty like Prof. Peeyush Mehta, while sharing my on-ground experience in manufacturing. Opportunities through project work would augment my academic learning by providing practical exposure to consulting skills.

With my experience in operations and learnings from MBAEx, I am confident that I will be able to achieve my career goals and add value to the learning experience of my peers at IIM C.